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LANCELOT 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

. . . POEMS . . . 
CAPTAIN CRAIG 

THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT 
THE TOWN DOWN THE RIVER 
THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY 
MERLIN 

. . . PLAYS . . . 
VAN ZORN. A Comedy in Three Acts 
THE PORCUPINE. A Drama in Three Acts 



LANCELOT 

A Poem 



BY 

EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON 




£fam fork 

THOMAS SELTZER 

1920 



Copyright, 1920, 
By THOMAS SELTZER, Inc. 

Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1920 
All Rights Reserved 



. JUL .12 1920 
©CI.A571708 



o 



Wo 

LEWIS ISAACS 



LANCELOT 

i 

Gawaine, aware again of Lancelot 
In the King's garden, coughed and followed him; 
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms 
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed — 
Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memories 
Fanned a sad wrath. "Why frown upon a friend? 
Few live that have too many," Gawaine said, 
And wished unsaid, so thinly came the light 
Between the narrowing lids at which he gazed. 
"And who of us are they that name their friends?" 

in 



Lancelot said. "They live that have not any. 
Why do they live, Gawaine? Ask why, and 



Two men of an elected eminence, 

They stood for a time silent. Then Gawaine, 

Acknowledging the ghost of what was gone, 

Put out his hand: "Rather, I say, why ask? 

If I be not the friend of Lancelot, 

May I be nailed alive along the ground 

And emmets eat me dead. If I be not 

The friend of Lancelot, may I be fried 

With other liars in the pans of hell. 

What item otherwise of immolation 

Your Darkness may invent, be it mine to endure 

And yours to gloat on. For the time between, 

Consider this thing you see that is my hand. 



If once, it has been yours a thousand times; 
Why not again? Gawaine has never lied 
To Lancelot; and this, of all wrong days — 
This day before the day when you go south 
To God knows what accomplishment of exile — 
Were surely an ill day for lies to find 
An issue or a cause or an occasion. 
King Ban your father and King Lot my father, 
Were they alive, would shake their heads in 

sorrow 
To see us as we are, and I shake mine 
In wonder. Will you take my hand, or no? 
Strong as I am, I do not hold it out 
For ever and on air. You see — my hand." 
Lancelot gave his hand there to Gawaine, 
Who took it, held it, and then let it go, 
Chagrined with its indifference. 
[3] 



"Yes, Gawaine, 
I go tomorrow, and I wish you well; 
You and your brothers, Gareth, Gaheris, — ■ 
And Agravaine; yes, even Agravaine, 
Whose tongue has told all Camelot and all Britain 
More lies than yet have hatched of Modred's envy. 
You say that you have never lied to me, 
And I believe it so. Let it be so, 
For now and always. Gawaine, I wish you well. 
Tomorrow I go south, as Merlin went, 
But not for Merlin's end. I go, Gawaine, 
And leave you to your ways. There are ways 
left." 

"There are three ways I know, three famous ways, 
And all in Holy Writ," Gawaine said, smiling: 
"The snake's way and the eagle's way are two, 
[4] 



And then we have a man's way with a maid— 

Or with a woman who is not a maid. 

Your late way is to send all women scudding, 

To the last flash of the last cramoisy, 

While you go south to find the fires of God 

Since we came back again to Camelot 

From our immortal Quest — I came back first — 

No man has known you for the man you were 

Before you saw whatever 't was you saw, 

To make so little of kings and queens and friends 

Thereafter. Modred? Agravaine? My brothers? 

And what if they be brothers? What are 

brothers, 
If they be not our friends, your friends and mine? 
You turn away, and my words are no mark 
On your affection or your memory? 
So be it then if so it is to be. 
[5] 



God save you, Lancelot; for by Saint Stephen,' 
You are no more the man to save yourself." 

"Gawalne, I do not say that you are wrong, 
Or that you are ill-seasoned in your lightness; 
You say that all you know is what you saw, 
And on your own averment you saw nothing. 
Your spoken word, Gawaine, I have not weighed 
In those unhappy scales of inference 
That have no beam but one made out of hates 
And fears, and venomous conjecturings; 
Your tongue is not the sword that urges me 
Now out of Camelot. Two other swords 
There are that are awake, and in their scabbards 
Are parching for the blood of Lancelot. 
Yet I go not away for fear of them, 
But for a sharper care. You say the truth, 
[61 



But not when you contend the fires of God 
Are my one fear, — for there is one fear more. 
Therefore I go. Gawaine, I wish you well." 

"Well-wishing in a way is well enough; 
So, in a way, is caution; so, in a way, 
Are leeches, neatherds, and astrologers. 
Lancelot, listen. Sit you down and listen: 
You talk of swords and fears and banishment. 
Two swords, you say; Modred and Agravaine, 
You mean. Had you meant Gaheris and Gareth, 
Or willed an evil on them, I should welcome 
And hasten your farewell. But Agravaine 
Hears little what I say; his ears are Modred's. 
The King is Modred's father, and the Queen 
A prepossession of Modred's lunacy. 
So much for my two brothers whom you fear, 
[7] 



Not fearing for yourself. I say to you, 
Fear not for anything — and so be wise 
And amiable again as heretofore; 
Let Modred have his humor, and Agravaine 
His tongue. The two of them have done their 

worst, 
And having done their worst, what have they done? 
A whisper now and then, a chirrup or so 
In corners, — and what else? Ask what, and 

answer." 

Still with a frown that had no faith in it, 
Lancelot, pitying Gawaine's lost endeavour 
To make an evil jest of evidence, 
Sat fronting him with a remote forbearance — 
Whether for Gawaine blind or Gawaine false, 
Or both, or neither, he could not say yet, 
[8] 



If ever; and to himself he said no more 
Than he said now aloud: "What else, Gawaine? 
What else, am I to say? Then ruin, I say; 
Destruction, dissolution, desolation, 
I say, — should I compound with jeopardy now. 
For there are more than whispers here, Gawaine: 
The way that we have gone so long together 
Has underneath our feet, without our will, 
Become a twofold faring. Yours, I trust, 
May lead you always on, as it has led you, 
To praise and to much joy. Mine, I believe, 
Leads off to battles that are not yet fought, 
And to the Light that once had blinded me. 
When I came back from seeing what I saw, 
I saw no place for me in Camelot. 
There is no place for me in Camelot. 
There is no place for me save where the Light 
[91 



May lead me; and to that place I shall go. 

Meanwhile I lay upon your soul no load 

Of counsel or of empty admonition; 

Only I ask of you, should strife arise 

In Camelot, to remember, if you may, 

That you've an ardor that outruns your reason, 

Also a glamour that outshines your guile; 

And you are a strange hater. I know that; 

And I'm in fortune that you hate not me. 

Yet while we have our sins to dream about, 

Time has done worse for time than in our making; 

Albeit there may be sundry f alterings 

And falls against us in the Book of Man." 

"Praise Adam, you are mellowing at last! 
I've always liked this world, and would so still; 
And if it is your new Light leads you on 
[10] 



To such an admirable gait, for God's sake, 
Follow it, follow it, follow it, Lancelot; 
Follow it as you never followed glory. 
Once I believed that I was on the way 
That you call yours, but I came home again 
To Camelot — and Camelot was right, 
For the world knows its own that knows not you; 
You are a thing too vaporous to be sharing 
The carnal feast of life. You mow down men 
Like elder-stems, and you leave women sighing 
For one more sight of you; but they do wrong. 
You are a man of mist, and have no shadow. 
God save you, Lancelot. If I laugh at you, 
I laugh in envy and in admiration." 

The joyless evanescence of a smile, 
Discovered on the face of Lancelot 
[111 



By Gawaine's unrelenting vigilance, 
Wavered, and with a sullen change went out; 
And then there was the music of a woman 
Laughing behind them, and a woman spoke : 
"Gawaine, you said 'God save you, Lancelot.' 
Why should He save him any more to-day 
Than on another day? What has he done, 
Gawaine, that God should save him?" Guinevere, 
With many questions in her dark blue eyes 
And one gay jewel in her golden hair, 
Had come upon the two of them unseen, 
Till now she was a russet apparition 
At which the two arose — one with a dash 
Of easy leisure in his courtliness, 
One with a stately calm that might have pleased 
The queen of a strange land indifferently. 
The firm incisive languor of her speech, 
[121 



Heard once, was heard through battles : " Lancelot, 
What have you done to-day that God should save 

you? 
What has he done, Gawaine, that God should save 

him? 
I grieve that you two pinks of chivalry 
Should be so near me in my desolation, 
And I, poor soul alone, know nothing of it. 
What has he done, Gawaine?" 

With all her poise, 
To Gawaine's undeceived urbanity 
She was less queen than woman for the nonce, 
And in her eyes there was a flickering 
Of a still fear that would not be veiled wholly 
With any mask of mannered nonchalance. 
" What has he done ? Madam, attend your nephew ; 
[13] 



And learn from him, in your incertitude, 
That this inordinate man Lancelot, 
This engine of renown, this hewer down daily 
Of potent men by scores in our late warfare, 
Has now inside his head a foreign fever 
That urges him away to the last edge 
Of everything, there to efface himself 
In ecstasy, and so be done with us. 
Hereafter, peradventure certain birds 
Will perch in meditation on his bones, 
Quite as if they were some poor sailor's bones, 
Or felon's jettisoned, or fisherman's, 
Or fowler's bones, or Mark of Cornwall's bones. 
In fine, this flower of men that was our comrade 
Shall be for us no more, from this day on, 
Than a much remembered Frenchman far away. 
Magnanimously I leave you now to prize 
[14] 



Your final sight of him; and leaving you, 
I leave the sun to shine for him alone, 
Whiles I grope on to gloom. Madam, farewell; 
And you, contrarious Lancelot, farewell." 



[15] 



II 

The flash of oak leaves over Guinevere 
That afternoon, with the sun going down, 
Made memories there for Lancelot, although 
The woman who in silence looked at him, 
Now seemed his inventory of the world 
That he must lose, or suffer to be lost 
For love of her who sat there in the shade, 
With oak leaves flashing in a golden light 
Over her face and over her golden hair. 
[16] 



"Gawaine has all the graces, yet he knows; 

He knows enough to be the end of us, 

If so he would," she said. "He knows and laughs; 

And we are at the mercy of a man 

Who, if the stars went out, would only laugh." 

She looked away at a small swinging blossom, 

And then she looked intently at her fingers, 

While a frown gathered slowly round her eyes, 

And wrinkled her white forehead. 

Lancelot, 
Scarce knowing whether to himself he spoke 
Or to the Queen, said emptily: "As for Gawaine, 
My question is, if any curious hind 
Or knight that is alive in Britain breathing, 
Or prince, or king, knows more of us, or less, 
Than Gawaine, in his gay complacency, 
[171 



Knows or believes he knows. There's over much 
Of knowing in this realm of many tongues, 
Where deeds are less to those who tell of them 
Than are the words they sow; and you and I 
Are like to yield a granary of such words, 
For God knows what next harvesting. Gawaine 
I fear no more than Gareth, or Colgrevance; 
So far as it is his to be the friend 
Of any man, so far is he my friend — 
Till I have crossed him in some enterprise 
Unlikely and unborn. So fear not Gawaine, 
But let your primal care be now for one 
Whose name is yours." 

The Queen, with her blue eyes 
Too bright for joy, still gazed on Lancelot, 
Who stared as if in angry malediction 
[181 



Upon the shorn grass growing at his feet. 
"Why do you speak as if the grass had ears 
And I had none? What are you saying now, 
So darkly to the grass, of knights and hinds? 
Are you the Lancelot who rode, long since, 
Away from me on that unearthly Quest, 
Which left no man the same who followed it — 
Or none save Gawaine, who came back so soon 
That we had hardly missed him?" Faintly then 
She smiled a little, more in her defence, 
He knew, than for misprision of a man 
Whom yet she feared: "Why do you set this 

day— 
This golden day, when all are not so golden — 
To tell me, with your eyes upon the ground, 
That idle words have been for idle tongues 
And ears a moment's idle entertainment? 
[19] 



Have I become, and all at once, a thing 

So new to courts, and to the buzz they make, 

That I should hear no murmur, see no sign? 

Where malice and ambition dwell with envy, 

They go the farthest who believe the least; 

So let them, — while I ask of you again, 

Why this day for all this? Was yesterday 

A day of ouphes and omens? Was it Friday? 

I don't remember. Days are all alike 

When I have you to look on; when you go, 

There are no days but hours. You might say now 

What Gawaine said, and say it in our language." 

The sharp light still was in her eyes, alive 

And anxious with a reminiscent fear. 

Lancelot, like a strong man stricken hard 
With pain, looked up at her unhappily; 
[201 



And slowly, on a low and final note, 
Said: "Gawaine laughs alike at what he knows, 
And at the loose convenience of his fancy; 
He sees in others what his humor needs 
To nourish it, and lives a merry life. 
Sometimes a random shaft of his will hit 
Nearer the mark than one a wise man aims 
With infinite address and reservation; 
So has it come to pass this afternoon." 

Blood left the quivering cheeks of Guinevere 
As color leaves a cloud; and where white was 
Before, there was a ghostliness not white, 
But gray; and over it her shining hair 
Coiled heavily its mocking weight of gold. 
The pride of her forlorn light-heartedness 
Fled like a storm-blown feather; and her fear, 
[21] 



Possessing her, was all that she possessed. 

She sought for Lancelot, but he seemed gone. 

There was a strong man glowering in a chair 

Before her, but he was not Lancelot, 

Or he would look at her and say to her 

That Gawaine's words were less than chaff in the 

wind — 
A nonsense about exile, birds, and bones, 
Born of an indolence of empty breath. 
"Say what has come to pass this afternoon," 
She said, " or I shall hear you all my life, 
Not hearing what it was you might have told." 

He felt the trembling of her slow last words, 
And his were trembling as he answered them: 
"Why this day, why no other? So you ask, 
And so must I in honor tell you more — 

[221 



For what end, I have yet no braver guess 
Than Modred has of immortality, 
Or you of Gawaine. Could I have him alone 
Between me and the peace I cannot know, 
My life were like the sound of golden bells 
Over still fields at sunset, where no storm 
Should ever blast the sky with fire again, 
Or thunder follow ruin for you and me, — 
As like it will, if I for one more day, 
Assume that I see not what I have seen, 
See now, and shall see. There are no more lies 
Left anywhere now for me to tell myself 
That I have not already told myself, 
And overtold, until today I seem 
To taste them as I might the poisoned fruit 
That Patrise had of Mador, and so died. 
And that same apple of death was to be food 



For Gawaine; but he left it and lives on, 

To make his joy of living your confusion. 

His life is his religion; he loves life 

With such a manifold exuberance 

That poison shuns him and seeks out a way 

To wreak its evil upon innocence. 

There may be chance in this, there may be law. 

Be what there be, I do not fear Gawaine." 

The Queen, with an indignant little foot, 
Struck viciously the unoffending grass 
And said: "Why not let Gawaine go his way? 
I'll think of him no more, fear him no more, 
And hear of him no more. I'll hear no more 
Of any now save one who is, or was, 
All men to me. And he said once to me 
That he would say why this day, of all days, 
[U] 



Was more mysteriously felicitous 
For solemn commination than another." 
Again she smiled, but her blue eyes were telling 
No more their story of old happiness. 

"For me today is not as other days," 
He said, "because it is the first, I find, 
That has empowered my will to say to you 
What most it is that you must hear and heed. 
When Arthur, with a faith unfortified, 
Sent me alone of all he might have sent, 
That May-day to Leodogran your father, 
I went away from him with a sore heart; 
For in my heart I knew that I should fail 
My King, who trusted me too far beyond 
The mortal outpost of experience. 
And this was after Merlin's admonition, 
[25] 



Which Arthur, in his passion, took for less 

Than his inviolable majesty. 

When I rode in between your father's guards 

And heard his trumpets blown for my loud honor, 

I sent my memory back to Camelot, 

And said once to myself, 'God save the King!' 

But the words tore my throat and were like 

blood 
Upon my tongue. Then a great shout went up 
From shining men around me everywhere; 
And I remember more fair women's eyes 
Than there are stars in autumn, all of them 
Thrown on me for a glimpse of that high knight 
Sir Lancelot — Sir Lancelot of the Lake. 
I saw their faces and I saw not one 
To sever a tendril of my integrity; 
But I thought once again, to make myself 
[M] 



Believe a silent lie, 'God save the King' .... 
I saw your face, and there were no more kings." 

The sharp light softened in the Queen's blue eyes, 
And for a moment there was joy in them: 
"Was I so menacing to the peace, I wonder, 
Of anyone else alive? But why go back? 
I tell you that I fear Gawaine no more; 
And if you fear him not, and I fear not 
What you fear not, what have we then to fear?" 
Fatigued a little with her reasoning, 
She waited longer than a woman waits, 
Without a cloudy sign, for Lancelot's 
Unhurried answer: "Whether or not you fear, 
Know always that I fear for me no stroke 
Maturing for the joy of any knave 
Who sees the world, with me alive in it, 
[27] 



A place too crowded for the furtherance 

Of his inflammatory preparations. 

But Lot of Orkney had a wife, a dark one; 

And rumor says no man who gazed at her, 

Attentively, might say his prayers again 

Without a penance or an absolution. 

I know not about that; but the world knows 

That Arthur prayed in vain once, if he prayed, 

Or we should have no Modred watching us. 

Know then that what you fear to call my fear 

Is all for you; and what is all for you 

Is all for love, which were the same to me 

As life — had I not seen what I have seen. 

But first I am to tell you what I see, 

And what I mean by fear. It is yourself 

That I see now; and if I saw you only, 

I might forego again all other service, 



And leave to Time, who is Love's almoner, 
The benefaction of what years or days 
Remaining might be found unchronicled 
For two that have not always watched or seen 
The sands of gold that flow for golden hours. 
If I saw you alone! But I know now 
That you are never more to be alone. 
The shape of one infernal foul attendant 
Will be for ever prowling after you, 
To leer at me like a damned thing whipped out 
Of the last cave in hell. You know his name. 
Over your shoulder I could see him now, 
Adventuring his misbegotten patience 
For one destroying word in the King's ear — 
The word he cannot whisper there quite yet, 
Not having it yet to say. If he should say it, 
Then all this would be over, and our days 
[29] 



Of life, your days and mine, be over with it. 
No day of mine that were to be for you 
Your last, would light for me a longer span 
Than for yourself; and there would be no twilight.' 

The Queen's implacable calm eyes betrayed 
The doubt that had as yet for what he said 
No healing answer: " If I fear no more 
Gawaine, I fear your Modred even less. 
Your fear, you say, is for an end outside 
Your safety; and as much as that I grant you. 
And I believe in your belief, moreover, 
That some far-off unheard-of retribution 
Hangs over Camelot, even as this oak-bough, 
That I may almost reach, hangs overhead, 
All dark now. Only a small time ago 
The light was falling through it, and on me. 
1301 



Another light, a longer time ago, 
Was living in your eyes, and we were happy. 
Yet there was Modred then as he is now, 
As much a danger then as he is now, 
And quite as much a nuisance. Let his eyes 
Have all the darkness in them they may hold, 
And there will be less left of it outside 
For fears to grope and thrive in. Lancelot, 
I say the dark is not what you fear most. 
There is a Light that you fear more today 
Than all the darkness that has ever been; 
Yet I doubt not that your Light will burn on 
For some time yet without your ministration. 
I'm glad for Modred, — though I hate his eyes, — 
That he should hold me nearer to your thoughts 
Than I should hold myself, I fear, without 
him; 

[31] 



I'm glad for Gawaine, also, — who, you tell me, 
Misled my fancy with his joy of living." 

Incredulous of her voice and of her lightness, 

He saw now in the patience of her smile 

A shining quiet of expectancy 

That made as much of his determination 

As he had made of giants and Sir Peris. 

"But I have more to say than you have heard," 

He faltered — "though God knows what you have 

heard 
Should be enough." 

"I see it now," she said; 
"I see it now as always women must 
Who cannot hold what holds them any more. 
If Modred's hate were now the only hazard — 
[32] 



The only shadow between you and me — 
How long should I be saying all this to you, 
Or you be listening? No, Lancelot, — no. 
I knew it coming for a longer time 
Than you fared for the Grail. You told yourself, 
When first that wild light came to make men mad 
Round Arthur's Table — as Gawaine told himself, 
And many another tired man told himself — 
That it was God, not something new, that called you. 
Well, God was something new to most of them, 
And so they went away. But you were changing 
Long before you, or Bors, or Percival, 
Or Galahad rode away — or poor Gawaine, 
Who came back presently; and for a time 
Before you went — albeit for no long time — 
I may have made for your too loyal patience 
A jealous exhibition of my folly — 
[33] 



All for those two Elaines; and one of them 
Is dead, poor child, for you. How do you feel, 
You men, when women die for you? They do, 
Sometimes, you know. Not often, but sometimes." 

Discomfiture, beginning with a scowl 
And ending in a melancholy smile, 
Crept over Lancelot's face the while he stared, 
More like a child than like the man he was, 
At Guinevere's demure serenity 
Before him in the shadow, soon to change 
Into the darkness of a darker night 
Than yet had been since Arthur was a king. 
"What seizure of an unrelated rambling 
Do you suppose it was that had you then?" 
He said; and with a frown that had no smile 
Behind it, he sat brooding. 
[341 



The Queen laughed, 
And looked at him again with lucent eyes 
That had no sharpness in them; they were soft 

now, 
And a blue light, made wet with happiness, 
Distilled from pain into abandonment, 
Shone out of them and held him while she smiled, 
Although they trembled with a questioning 
Of what his gloom foretold: "All that I saw 
Was true, and I have paid for what I saw — 
More than a man may know. Hear me, and listen: 
You cannot put me or the truth aside, 
With half -told words that I could only wish 
No man had said to me; not you, of all men. 
If there were only Modred in the way, 
Should I see now, from here and in this light, 
So many furrows over your changed eyes? 
F351 



Why do you fear for me when all my fears 

Are for the needless burden you take on? 

To put me far away, and your fears with me, 

Were surely no long toil, had you the will 

To say what you have known and I have known 

Longer than I dare guess. Have little fear : 

Never shall I become for you a curse 

Laid on your conscience to be borne for ever; 

Nor shall I be a weight for you to drag 

On always after you, as a poor slave 

Drags iron at his heels. Therefore, today, 

These ominous reassurances of mine 

W T ould seem to me to be a waste of life, 

And more than life.'' 

Lancelot's memory wandered 
Into the blue and wistful distances 
[361 



That her soft eyes unveiled. He knew their trick, 
As he knew the great love that fostered it, 
And the wild passionate fate that hid itself 
In all the perilous calm of white and gold 
That was her face and hair, and might as well 
Have been of gold and marble for the world, 
And for the King. Before he knew, she stood 
Behind him with her warm hands on his cheeks, 
And her lips on his lips; and though he heard 
Not half of what she told, he heard enough 
To make as much of it, or so it seemed, 
As man was ever told, or should be told, 
Or need be, until everything was told, 
And all the mystic silence of the stars 
Had nothing more to keep or to reveal. 
"If there were only Modred in the way," 
She murmured, "would you come to me tonight? 
[371 



The King goes to Carleon or Carlisle, 

Or some place where there's hunting. Would you 

come, 
If there were only Modred in the way?" 
She felt his hand on hers and laid her cheek 
Upon his forehead, where the furrows were: 
"All these must go away, and so must I — 
Before there are more, shadows. You will come, 
And you may tell me everything you must 
That I must hear you tell me — if I must — 
Of bones and horrors and of horrid waves 
That break for ever on the world's last edge." 



[38J 



Ill 

Lancelot looked about him, but he saw 
No Guinevere. The place where she had sat 
Was now an empty chair that might have been 
The shadowy throne of an abandoned world, 
But for the living fragrance of a kiss 
That he remembered, and a living voice 
That hovered when he saw that she was gone. 
There was too much remembering while he felt 
Upon his cheek the warm sound of her words; 
There was too much regret; there was too much 
l?9] 



Remorse. Regret was there for what had gone, 
Remorse for what had come. Yet there was time, 
That had not wholly come. There was time 

enough 
Between him and the night — as there were shoals 
Enough, no doubt, that in the sea somewhere 
Were not yet hidden by the drowning tide. 
" So there is here between me and the dark 
Some twilight left," he said. He sighed, and said 
Again, "Time, tide, and twilight — and the dark; 
And then, for me, the Light. But what for her? 
I do not think of anything but life 
That I may give to her by going now; 
And if I look into her eyes^ again, 
Or feel her breath upon my face again, 
God knows if I may give so much as life; 
Or if the durance of her loneliness 
[40] 



Would have it for the asking. What am I? 
What have I seen that I must leave behind 
So much of heaven and earth to burn itself 
Away in white and gold, until in time 
There shall be no more white and no more gold? 
I cannot think of such a time as that; 
I cannot — yet I must; for I am he 
That shall have hastened it and hurried on 
To dissolution all that wonderment — 
That envy of all women who have said 
She was a child of ice and ivory; 
And of all men, save one. And who is he? 
Who is this Lancelot that has betrayed 
His Eang, and served him with a cankered honor? 
Who is this Lancelot that sees the Light 
And waits now in the shadow for the dark? 
Who is this King, this Arthur, who believes 
[41] 



That what has been, and is, will be for ever, — 
Who has no eye for what he will not see, 
And will see nothing but what's passing here 
In Camelot, which is passing? Why are we here? 
What are we doing — kings, queens, Camelots, 
And Lancelots? And what is this dim world 
That I would leave, and cannot leave tonight 
Because a Queen is in it and a King 
Has gone away to some place where there's hunting — 
Carleon or Carlisle! Who is this Queen, 
This pale witch-wonder of white fire and gold, 
This Guinevere that I brought back with me 
From Cameliard for Arthur, who knew then 
What Merlin told, as he forgets it now 
And rides away from her — God watch the world ! — 
To some place where there's hunting! What are 
kings? 

[42] 



And how much longer are there to be kings? 
When are the millions who are now like worms 
To know that kings are worms, if they are worms? 
When are the women who make toys of men 
To know that they themselves are less than toys 
When Time has laid upon their skins the touch 
Of his all-shrivelling fingers? When are they 
To know that men must have an end of them 
When men have seen the Light and left the world 
That I am leaving now. Yet here I am, 
And all because a king has gone a-hunting .... 
Carleon or Carlisle I" 

So Lancelot 
Fed with a sullen rancor, which he knew 
To be as false as he was to the King, 
The passion and the fear that now in him 
[43] 



Were burning like two slow infernal fires 

That only flight and exile far away 

From Camelot should ever cool again. 

"Yet here I am," he said, — "and here I am. 

Time, tide, and twilight; and there is no twilight — 

And there is not much time. But there's enough 

To eat and drink in; and there may be time 

For me to frame a jest or two to prove 

How merry a man may be who sees the Light. 

And I must get me up and go along, 

Before the shadows blot out everything, 

And leave me stumbling among skeletons. 

God, what a rain of ashes falls on him 

Who sees the new and cannot leave the old!" 

He rose and looked away into the south 
Where a gate was, by which he might go out, 
[44] 



Now, if he would, while Time was yet there with 

him — 
Time that was tearing minutes out of life 
While he stood shivering in his loneliness, 
And while the silver lights of memory- 
Shone faintly on a far-off eastern shore 
Where he had seen on earth for the last time 
The triumph and the sadness in the face 
Of Galahad, for whom the Light was waiting. 
Now he could see the face of him again, 
He fancied; and his flickering will adjured him 
To follow it and be free. He followed it 
Until it faded and there was no face, 
And there was no more light. Yet there was time 
That had not come, though he could hear it now 
Like ruining feet of marching conquerors 
That would be coming soon and were not men. 
[45] 



Forlornly and unwillingly he came back 
To find the two dim chairs. In one of them 
Was Guinevere, and on her phantom face 
There fell a golden light that might have been 
The changing gleam of an unchanging gold 
That was her golden hair. He sprang to touch 
The wonder of it, but she too was gone, 
Like Galahad; he was alone again 
With shadows, and one face that he still saw. 
The world had no more faces now than one 
That for a moment, with a flash of pain, 
Had shown him what it is that may be seen 
In embers that break slowly into dust, 
Where for a time was fire. ^He saw it there 
Before him, and he knew it was not good 
That he should learn so late, and of this hour, 
What men may leave behind them in the eyes 

r 461 



Of women who have nothing more to give, 

And may not follow after. Once again 

He gazed away to southward, but the face 

Of Galahad was not there. He turned, and saw 

Before him, in the distance, many lights 

In Arthur's palace; for the dark had come 

To Camelot, while Time had come and gone. 



[47] 



IV 

Not having viewed Carleon or Carlisle, 
The King came home to Camelot after midnight, 
Feigning an ill not feigned; and his return 
Brought Bedivere, and after him Gawaine, 
To the King's inner chamber, where they waited 
Through the grim light of dawn. Sir Bedivere, 
By nature stern to see, though not so bleak 
Within as to be frozen out of mercy, 
Sat with arms crossed and with his head weighed 
low 

[48] 



In heavy meditation. Once or twice 
His eyes were lifted for a careful glimpse 
Of Gawaine at the window, where he stood 
Twisting his fingers feverishly behind him, 
Like one distinguishing indignantly, 
For swift eclipse and for offence not his, 
The towers and roofs and the sad majesty 
Of Camelot in the dawn, for the last time. 

Sir Bedivere, at last, with a long sigh 
That said less of his pain than of his pity, 
Addressed the younger knight who turned and 

heard 
His elder, but with no large eagerness: 
"So it has come, Gawaine; and we are here. 
I find when I see backward something farther, 
By grace of time, than you are given to see — 
[49] 



Though you, past any doubt, see much that I 
See not — I find that what the colder speech 
Of reason most repeated says to us 
Of what is in a way to come to us 
Is like enough to come. And we are here. 
Before the unseeing sun is here to mock us, 
Or the King here to prove us, we are here. 
We are the two, it seems, that are to make 
Of words and of our presences a veil 
Between him and the sight of what he does. 
Little have I to say that I may tell him: 
For what I know is what the city knows, 
Not what it says, — for it says everything. 
The city says the first of all who met 
The sword of Lancelot was Colgrevance, 
Who fell dead while he wept — a brave machine, 
Cranked only for the rudiments of war. 
[501 



But some of us are born to serve and shift, 
And that's not well. The city says, also, 
That you and Lancelot were in the garden, 
Before the sun went down." 

"Yes," Gawaine groaned; 
"Yes, we were there together in the garden, 
Before the sun went down; and I conceive 
A place among the possibilities 
For me with other causes unforeseen 
Of what may shake down soon to grief and ashes 
This kingdom and this empire. Bedivere, 
Could I have given a decent seriousness 
To Lancelot while he said things to me 
That pulled the heart half out of him by the roots, 
And left him, I see now, half sick with pity 
For my poor uselessness to serve a need 
[511 



That I had never known, we might be now 
Asleep and easy in our beds at home, 
And we might hear no murmurs after sunrise 
Of what we are to hear. A few right words 
Of mine, if said well, might have been enough. 
That shall I never know. I shall know only 
That it was I who laughed at Lancelot 
When he said what lay heaviest on his heart. 
By now he might be far away from here, 
And farther from the world. But the Queen came; 
The Queen came, and I left them there together; 
And I laughed as I left them. After dark 
I met with Modred and said what I could, 
When I had heard him, to discourage him. 
His mother was my mother. I told Bors, 
And he told Lancelot; though as for that, 
My story would have been the same as his, 
[521 



And would have had the same acknowledgment : 
'Thanks, but no matter' — or to that effect. 
The Queen, of course, had fished him for his word, 
And had it on the hook when she went home; 
And after that, an army of red devils 
Could not have held the man away from her. 
And I'm to live as long as I'm to wonder 
What might have been, had I not been — myself. 
I heard him, and I laughed. Then the Queen 
came." 

"Recriminations are not remedies, 

Gawaine; and though you cast them at yourself, 

And hurt yourself, you cannot end or swerve 

The flowing of these minutes that leave hours 

Behind us, as we leave our faded selves 

And yesterdays. The surest- visioned of us 

r 53 1 



Are creatures of our dreams and inferences, 
And though it look to us a few go far 
For seeing far, the fewest and the farthest 
Of all we know go not beyond themselves. 
No, Gawaine, you are not the cause of this; 
And I have many doubts if what you said, 
Or what you in your lightness left unsaid, 
Would have unarmed the Queen. The Queen was 

coming." — 
Gawaine looked up, and then looked down again: 
"Good God, if I had only said — said something!" 

"Say nothing now, Gawaine." Bedivere sighed, 
And shook his head: "Morning is not in the west. 
The sun is rising and the King is coming; 
Now you may hear him in the corridor, 
Like a sick landlord shuffling to the light 
[54] 



For one last look-out on his mortgaged hills. 
But hills and valleys are not what he sees; 
He sees with us the fire — the sign — the law. 
The King that is the father of the law 
Is weaker than his child, except he slay it. 
Not long ago, Gawaine, I had a dream 
Of a sword over kings, and of a world 
Without them." — "Dreams, dreams." — "Hush, 
Gawaine." 

King Arthur 
Came slowly on till in the darkened entrance 
He stared and shivered like a sleep-walker, 
Brought suddenly awake where a cliffs edge 
Is all he sees between another step 
And his annihilation. Bedivere rose, 
And Gawaine rose; and with instinctive arms 
[55 1 



They partly guided, partly carried him, 
To the King's chair. 

"I thank you, gentlemen, 
Though I am not so shaken, I dare say, 
As you would have me. This is not the hour 
When kings who do not sleep are at their best; 
And had I slept this night that now is over, 
No man should ever call me King again>" 
He pulled his heavy robe around him closer, 
And laid upon his forehead a cold hand 
That came down warm and wet. " You, Bedivere, 
And you, Gawaine, are shaken with events 
Incredible yesterday, — but kings are men. 
Take off their crowns and tear away their color 
And let them see with my eyes what I see — 
Yes, they are men, indeed! If there's a slave 
[56] 



In Britain with a reptile at his heart 
Like mine that with his claws of ice and fire 
Tears out of me the fevered roots of mercy, 
Find him, and I will make a king of him! 
And then, so that his happiness may swell 
Tenfold, I'll sift the beauty of all courts 
And capitals, to fetch the fairest woman 
That evil has in hiding; after that, 
That he may know the sovran one man living 
To be his friend, I'll prune all chivalry 
To one sure knight. In this wise our new king 
Will have his queen to love, as I had mine, — 
His friend that he may trust, as I had mine, — 
And he will be as gay, if all goes well, 
As I have been : as fortunate in his love, 
And in his friend as fortunate — as I am! 
And what am I? . . . And what are you — you two! 
[57] 



If you are men, why don't you say I'm dreaming? 
I know men when I see them, I know daylight; 
And I see now the gray shine of our dreams. 
I tell you I'm asleep and in my bed ! . . . . 
But no — no .... I remember. You are men. 
You are no dreams — but God, God, if you were! 
If I were strong enough to make you vanish 
And have you back again with yesterday — 
Before I lent myself to that false hunting, 
Which yet may stalk the hours of many more 
Than Lancelot's unhappy twelve who died, — 
With a misguided Colgrevance to lead them, 
And Agravaine to follow and fall next, — 
Then should I know at last that I was King, 
And I should then be King. But kings are men, 
And I have gleaned enough these two years gone 
To know that queens are women. Merlin told me: 
[58] 



'The love that never was.' Two years ago 

He told me that: 'The love that never was!' 

I saw — but I saw nothing. Like the bird 

That hides his head, I made myself see nothing. 

But yesterday I saw — and I saw fire. 

I think I saw it first in Modred's eyes; 

Yet he said only truth — and fire is right. 

It is — it must be fire. The law says fire. 

And I, the King who made the law, say fire! 

What have I done — what folly have I said, 

Since I came here, of dreaming? Dreaming? Ha! 

I wonder if the Queen and Lancelot 

Are dreaming! .... Lancelot! Have they found 

him yet? 
He slashed a way into the outer night — 
Somewhere with Bors. We'll have him here anon, 
And we shall feed him also to the fire. 
[591 



There are too many faggots lying cold 
That might as well be cleansing, for our good, 
A few deferred infections of our state 
That honor should no longer look upon. 
Thank heaven, I man my drifting wits again! 
Gawaine, your brothers, Gareth and Gaheris, 
Are by our royal order there to see 
And to report. They went unwillingly, 
For they are new to law and young to justice; 
But what they are to see will harden them 
With wholesome admiration of a realm 
Where treason's end is ashes. Ashes. Ashes! 
Now this is better. I am King again. 
Forget, I pray, my drowsy temporizing, 
For I was not then properly awake .... 
What? Hark! Whose crass insanity is that! 
If I be King, go find the fellow and hang him 
[60] 



Who beats into the morning on that bell 
Before there is a morning! This is dawn! 
What! Bedivere? Gawaine? You shake your 

heads? 
I tell you this is dawn! .... What have I done? 
What have I said so lately that I flinch 
To think on! What have I sent those boys to see? 
I'll put clouts on my eyes, and I'll not see it ! 
Her face, and hands, and little small white feet, 
And all her shining hair and her warm body — 
No — for the love of God, no! — it's alive! 
She's all alive, and they are burning her — 
The Queen — the love — the love that never was! 
Gawaine! Bedivere! Gawaine! — Where is 

Gawaine! 
Is he there in the shadow? Is he dead? 
Are we all dead? Are we in hell? — Gawaine! . . . 
f611 



I cannot see her now in the smoke. Her eyes 
Are what I see — and her white body is burning! 
She never did enough to make me see her 
Like that — to make her look at me like that ! 
There's not room in the world for so much evil 
As I see clamoring in her poor white face 
For pity. Pity her, God! God! . . . Lancelot!" 



62 



Gawaine, his body trembling and his heart 

Pounding as if he were a boy in battle, 

Sat crouched as far away from everything 

As walls would give him distance. Bedivere 

Stood like a man of stone with folded arms, 

And wept in stony silence. The King moved 

His pallid lips and uttered fitfully 

Low fragments of a prayer that was half sad, 

Half savage, and was ended in a crash 

Of distant sound that anguish lifted near 

To those who heard it. Gawaine sprang again 



To the same casement where the towers and roofs 

Had glimmered faintly a long hour ago, 

But saw no terrors yet — though now he heard 

A fiercer discord than allegiance rings 

To rouse a mourning city : blows, groans, cries, 

Loud iron struck on iron, horses trampling, 

Death-yells and imprecations, and at last 

A moaning silence. Then a murmuring 

Of eager fearfulness, which had a note 

Of exultation and astonishment, 

Came nearer, till a tumult of hard feet 

Filled the long corridor where late the King 

Had made a softer progress. 

"Well then, Lucan," 
The King said, urging an indignity 
To qualify suspense; "For what arrears 

[641 



Of grace are we in debt for this attention? 
Why all this early stirring of our sentries, 
And their somewhat unseasoned innovation, 
To bring you at this unappointed hour? 
Are we at war with someone or another, 
Without our sanction or intelligence? 
Are Lucius and the Romans here to greet us, 
Or was it Lucius we saw dead?" 

Sir Lucan 
Bowed humbly in amazed acknowledgment 
Of his intrusion, meanwhile having scanned 
What three grief -harrowed faces were revealing: 
" Praise God, sir, there are tears in the King's eyes, 
And in his friends*. Having regarded them, 
And having ventured an abrupt appraisal 
Of what I translate ..." 

[65] 



"laieau." the King said, 

M No matter what procedure or persuasion 
Gave you an entrance — loll us what it is 

That you have Come to toll US, and no move. 

There was a most uncivil sound abroad 
Before you came. Who riots in the city?" 

Sir, will your patience with a clement oar. 
Attend the confirmation of events, 
I will, with all available precision, 
Say what this morning has Inaugurated* 
No preface or prolonged exordium 
Need aggravate the narrative, 1 venture. 
The man of God, requiring of the Queen 
A last assoiling prayer for her salvation, 
Heard what none else did hoar save God the 
Father; 

1 W 1 



Titan ;i great buah descended on a scene 
Where stronger men than I fell on their knees, 

And wet with tears their mall of shining iron 

That soon was to be cleft unconscionably 

Beneath a blast of anguish as intense 
And fabulous in ardor and effect 

As Jove's is in his lightning. To be short. 

They led the Queen — and she went bravely to it, 

Or so she was configured in the picture — 

A brief way more; and we who did see that, 

Believed we saw the last of all her sharing 

In this conglomerate and perplexed existence, 
l^ut no — and here the prodigy comes in — 
The penal flame had hardly bit the faggot, 
When, like an onslaught out of Erebus, 
There Came a crash of horses, and a flash 
Of axes, and a hewing down of heroes, 
167] 



Not like to any in its harsh, profound, 
Unholy, and uneven execution. 
I felt the breath of one horse on my neck, 
And of a sword that all but left a chasm 
Where still, praise be to God, I have intact 
A face, if not a fair one. I achieved 
My flight, I trust, with honorable zeal, 
Not having arms, or mail, or preservation 
In any phase of necessary iron. 
I found a refuge; and there saw the Queen, 
All white, and in a swound of woe uplifted 
By Lionel, while a dozen fought about him, 
And Lancelot, who seized her while he struck, 
And with his insane army galloped away, 
Before the living, whom he left amazed, 
Were sure they were alive among the dead. 
Not even in the legendary mist 
[681 



Of wars that none today may verify, 
Did ever men annihilate their kind 
With a more vicious inhumanity, 
Or a more skilful frenzy. Lancelot 
And all his heated adjuncts are by now 
Too far, I fear, for such immediate 
Reprisal as your majesty perchance ..." 

"O' God's name, Lucan," the King cried, "be still !" 
He gripped with either sodden hand an arm 
Of his unyielding chair, while his eyes blazed 
In anger, wonder, and fierce hesitation. 
Then with a sigh that may have told unheard 
Of an unwilling gratitude, he gazed 
Upon his friends who gazed again at him; 
But neither King nor friend said anything 
Until the King turned once more to Sir Lucan : 
[69 1 



"Be still, or publish with a shorter tongue 
The names of our companions who are dead. 
Well, were you there? Or did you run so fast 
That you were never there? You must have eyes, 
Or you could not have run to find us here." 

Then Lucan, with a melancholy glance 
At Gawaine, who stood glaring his impatience, 
Addressed again the King: "I will be short, sir; 
Too brief to measure with finality 
The scope of what I saw with indistinct 
Amazement and incredulous concern. 
Sir Tor, Sir Griflet, and Sir Agio vale 
Are dead. Sir Gillimer, he is dead. Sir — Sir — 
But should a living error be detailed 
In my account, how should I meet your wrath 
For such a false addition to your sorrow?" 
[70] 



He turned again to Gawaine, who shook now 

As if the fear in him were more than fury. — 

The King, observing Gawaine, beat his foot 

In fearful hesitancy on the floor: 

"No, Lucan; if so kind an error lives 

In your dead record, you need have no fear. 

My sorrow has already, in the weight 

Of this you tell, too gross a task for that." 

"Then I must offer you cold naked words, 
Without the covering warmth of even one 
Forlorn alternative," said Lucan, slowly: 
"Sir Gareth, and Sir Gaheris — are dead." 

The rage of a fulfilled expectancy, 
Long tortured on a rack of endless moments, 
Flashed out of Gawaine's overflowing eyes 
[71] 



While he flew forward, seizing Lucan's arms, 
And hurled him while he held him. — "Stop, 

Gawaine," 
The King said grimly. "Now is no time for that. 
If Lucan, in a too bewildered heat 
Of observation or sad reckoning, 
Has added life to death, our joy therefor 
Will be the larger. You have lost yourself." 

"More than myself it is that I have lost," 
Gawaine said, with a choking voice that faltered: 
"Forgive me, Lucan; I was a little mad. 
Gareth? — and Gaheris? Do you say their names, 
And then say they are dead! They had no arms- 
No armor. They were like you — and you live ! 
Why do you live when they are dead ! You ran, 
You say? Well, why were they not running — 
[721 



If they ran only for a pike to die with? 
I knew my brothers, and I know your tale 
Is not all told. Gareth? — and Gaheris? 
Would they stay there to die like silly children? 
Did they believe the King would have them die 
For nothing? There are dregs of reason, Lucan, 
In lunacy itself. My brothers, Lucan, 
Were murdered like two dogs. Who murdered 
them?" 

Lucan looked helplessly at Bedivere, 
The changeless man of stone, and then at Gawaine: 
" I cannot use the word that you have used, 
Though yours must have an answer. Your two 

brothers 
Would not have squandered or destroyed them- 
selves 

[731 



In a vain show of action. I pronounce it, 

If only for their known obedience 

To the King's instant wish. Know then your 

brothers 
Were caught and crowded, this way and then that, 
With men and horses raging all around them; 
And there were swords and axes everywhere 
That heads of men were. Armored and unarmored, 
They knew the iron alike. In so great press, 
Discrimination would have had no pause 
To name itself; and therefore Lancelot 
Saw not — or seeing, he may have seen too late — 
On whom his axes fell." 

"Why do you flood 
The name of Lancelot with words enough 
To drown him and his army — and his axes! . . . 
[74] 



His axes? — or his axe! Which, Lucan? Speak! 
Speak, or by God you'll never speak again ! . . . 
Forgive me, Lucan; I was a little mad. 
You, sir, forgive me; and you, Bedivere. 
There are too many currents in this ocean 
Where I'm adrift, and I see no land yet. 
Men tell of a great whirlpool in the north 
Where ships go round until the men aboard 
Go dizzy, and are dizzy when they're drowning. 
But whether I'm to drown or find the shore, 
There is one thing — and only one thing now — 
For me to know .... His axes? or his axe! 
Say, Lucan, or I — O Lucan, speak — speak — speak ! 
Lucan, did Lancelot kill my two brothers?" 

"I say again that in all human chance 
He knew not upon whom his axe was falling." 
[75] 



"So! Then it was his axe and not his axes. 
It was his hell-begotten self that did it, 
And it was not his men. Gareth ! Gaheris ! 
You came too soon. There was no place for you 
Where there was Lancelot. My folly it was, 
Not yours, to take for true the inhuman glamour 
Of his high-shining fame for that which most 
Was not the man. The truth we see too late 
Hides half its evil in our stupidity; 
And we gape while we groan for what we learn. 
An hour ago and I was all but eager 
To mourn with Bedivere for grief I had 
That I did not say something to this villain — 
To this true, gracious, murderous friend of mine — 
To comfort him and urge him out of this, 
While I was half a fool and half believed 
That he was going. Well, there is this to say : 
[76] 



The world that has him will not have him long. 
You see how calm I am, now I have said it? 
And you, sir, do you see how calm I am? 
And it was I who told of shipwrecks — whirlpools- 
Drowning ! I must have been a little mad, 
Not having occupation. Now I have one. 
And I have now a tongue as many-phrased 
As Lucan's. Gauge it, Lucan, if you will; 
Or take my word. It's all one thing to me — 
All one, all one! There's only one thing left . . . 
Gareth and Gaheris! Gareth! . . . Lancelot!" 

"Look, Bedivere," the King said: "look to 

Gawaine. 
Now lead him, you and Lucan, to a chair — 
As you and Gawaine led me to this chair 
Where I am sitting. We may all be led, 
[77] 



If there be coming on for Camelot 
Another day like this. Now leave me here, 
Alone with Gawaine. When a strong man goes 
Like that, it makes him sick to see his friends 
Around him. Leave us, and go now. Sometimes 
I'll scarce remember that he's not my son, 
So near he seems. I thank you, gentlemen." 

The King, alone with Gawaine, who said nothing, 
Had yet no heart for news of Lancelot 
Or Guinevere. He saw them on their way 
To Joyous Gard, where Tristram and Isolt 
Had islanded of old their stolen love, 
While Mark of Cornwall entertained a vengeance 
Envisaging an ending of all that; 
And he could see the two of them together 
As Mark had seen Isolt there, and her knight, — 
[78] 



Though not, like Mark, with murder in his eyes. 
He saw them as if they were there already, 
And he were a lost thought long out of mind; 
He saw them lying in each other's arms, 
Oblivious of the living and the dead 
They left in Camelot. Then he saw the dead 
That lay so quiet outside the city walls, 
And wept, and left the Queen to Lancelot — 
Or would have left her, had the will been his 
To leave or take; for now he could acknowledge 
An inrush of a desolate thanksgiving 
That she, with death around her, had not died. 
The vision of a peace that humbled him, 
And yet might save the world that he had won, 
Came slowly into view like something soft 
And ominous on all-fours, without a spirit 
To make it stand upright. " Better be that, 
[79] 



Even that, than blood," he sighed, "if that be 

peace." 
But looking down on Gawaine, who said nothing, 
He shook his head: "The King has had his world, 
And he shall have no peace. With Modred here, 
And Agravaine with Gareth, who is dead 
With Gaheris, Gawaine will have no peace. 
Gawaine or Modred — Gawaine with his hate, 
Or Modred with his anger for his birth, 
And the black malady of his ambition — 
Will make of my Round Table, where was drawn 
The circle of a world, a thing of wreck 
And yesterday — a furniture forgotten; 
And I, who loved the world as Merlin did, 
May lose it as he lost it, for a love 
That was not peace, and therefore was not love." 

[80] 



VI 



The dark of ModrecTs hour not yet availing, 
Gawaine it was who gave the King no peace; 
Gawaine it was who goaded him and drove him 
To Joyous Gard, where now for long his army, 
Disheartened with unprofitable slaughter, 
Fought for their weary King and wearily 
Died fighting. Only Gawaine's hate it was 
That held the King's knights and his warrior 

slaves 
Close-hived in exile, dreaming of old scenes 
[811 



Where Sorrow, and her demon sister Fear, 

Now shared the dusty food of loneliness, 

From Orkney to Cornwall. There was no peace, 

Nor could there be, so Gawaine told the King, 

And so the King in anguish told himself, 

Until there was an end of one of them — 

Of Gawaine or the King, or Lancelot, 

Who might have had an end, as either knew, 

Long since of Arthur and of Gawaine with him. 

One evening in the moonlight Lancelot 
And Bors, his kinsman, and the loyalest, 
If least assured, of all who followed him, 
Sat gazing from an ivy-cornered casement 
In angry silence upon Arthur's horde, 
Who in the silver distance, without sound, 
Were dimly burying dead men. Sir Bors, 
[82] 



Reiterating vainly what was told 
As wholesome hearing for unhearing ears, 
Said now to Lancelot: "And though it be 
For no more now than always, let me speak: 
You have a pity for the King, you say, 
That is not hate; and for Gawaine you have 
A grief that is not hate. Pity and grief ! 
And the Queen all but shrieking out her soul 
That morning when we snatched her from the 

faggots 
That were already crackling when we came! 
Why, Lancelot, if in you is an answer, 
Have you so vast a charity for the King, 
And so enlarged a grief for his gay nephew, 
Whose tireless hate for you has only one 
Disastrous appetite? You know for what — 
For your slow blood. I knew you, Lancelot, 
[831 



When all this would have been a merry fable 
For smiling men to yawn at and forget, 
As they forget their physic. Pity and grief 
Are in your eyes. I see them well enough; 
And I saw once with you, in a far land, 
The glimmering of a Light that you saw nearer — 
Too near for your salvation or advantage, 
If you be what you seem. What I saw then 
Made life a wilder mystery than ever, 
And earth a new illusion. You, maybe, 
Saw pity and grief. What I saw was a Gleam, 
To fight for or to die for — till we know 
Too much to fight or die. Tonight you turn 
A page whereon your deeds are to engross 
Inexorably their story of tomorrow; 
And then tomorrow. How many of these 
tomorrows 

[841 



Are coming to ask unanswered why this war 
Was fought and fought for the vain sake of 

slaughter? 
Why carve a compost of a multitude, 
When only two, discriminately despatched, 
Would sum the end of what you know is ending, 
And leave to you the scorch of no more blood 
Upon your blistered soul? The Light you saw 
Was not for this poor crumbling realm of Arthur, 
Nor more for Rome; but for another state 
That shall be neither Rome nor Camelot, 
Nor one that we may name. Why longer, then, 
Are you and Gawaine to anoint with war, 
That even in hell would be superfluous, 
A reign already dying, and ripe to die? 
I leave you to your last interpretation 
Of what may be the pleasure of your madness." 
[85] 



Meanwhile a mist was hiding the dim work 
Of Arthur's men; and like another mist, 
All gray, came Guinevere to Lancelot, 
Whom Bors had left, not having had of him 
The largess of a word. She laid her hands 
Upon his hair, vexing him to brief speech: 
"And you — are you like Bors?" 

"I may be so," 
She said; and she saw faintly where she gazed, 
Like distant insects of a shadowy world, 
Dim clusters here and there of shadowy men 
Whose occupation was her long abhorrence: 
" If he came here and went away again, 
And all for nothing, I may be like Bors. 
Be glad, at least, that I am not like Mark 
Of Cornwall, who stood once behind a man 
[861 



And slew him without saying he was there. 
Not Arthur, I believe, nor yet Gawaine, 
Would have done quite like that; though only God 
May say what there's to come before this war 
Shall have an end — unless you are to see, 
As I have seen so long, a way to end it." 

He frowned, and watched again the coming mist 
That hid with a cold veil of augury 
The stillness of an empire that was dying: 
"And are you here to say that if I kill 
Gawaine and Arthur we shall both be happy?" 

"Is there still such a word as happiness? 
I come to tell you nothing, Lancelot, 
That folly and waste have not already told you. 
Were you another man than Lancelot, 
[87] 



I might say folly and fear. But no — no fear, 
As I know fear, was yet composed and wrought, 
By man, for your delay and your undoing. 
God knows how cruelly and how truly now 
You might say, that of all who breathe and suffer 
There may be others who are not so near 
To you as I am, and so might say better 
What I say only with a tongue not apt 
Or guarded for much argument. A woman, 
As men have known since Adam heard the first 
Of Eve's interpreting of how it was 
In Paradise, may see but one side only — 
Where maybe there are two, to say no more. 
Yet here, for you and me; and so for all 
Caught with us in this lamentable net, 
I see but one deliverance; I see none, 
Unless you cut for us a clean way out, 
[881 



So rending these hate-woven webs of horror 
Before they mesh the world. And if the world 
Of Arthur's name be now a dying glory, 
Why bleed it for the sparing of a man 
Who hates you, and a King that hates himself? 
If war be war — and I make only blood 
Of your red writing — why dishonor Time 
For torture longer drawn in your slow game 
Of empty slaughter? Tomorrow it will be 
The King's move, I suppose, and we shall have 
One more magnificent waste of nameless pawns, 
And of a few more knights. God, how you love 
This game! — to make so loud a shambles of it, 
When you have only twice to lift your finger 
To signal peace, and give to this poor drenched 
And clotted earth a time to heal itself. 
Twice over I say to you, if war be war, 
[89] 



Why play with it? Why look a thousand ways 
Away from what it is, only to find 
A few stale memories left that would requite 
Your tears with your destruction? Tears, I say, 
For I have seen your tears; I see them now, 
Although the moon is dimmer than it was 
Before I came. I wonder if I dimmed it. 
I wonder if I brought this fog here with me 
To make you chillier even than you are 
When I am not so near you. . . . Lancelot, 
There must be glimmering yet somewhere within 

you 
The last spark of a little willingness 
To tell me why it is this war goes on. 
Once I believed you told me everything; 
And what you may have hidden was no matter, 
For what you told was all I needed then. 
[90] 



But crumbs that are a festival for joy 
Make a dry fare for sorrow; and the few 
Spared words that were enough to nourish faith, 
Are for our lonely fears a frugal poison. 
So, Lancelot, if only to bring back 
For once the ghost of a forgotten mercy, 
Say now, even though you strike me to the floor 
When you have said it, for what untold end 
All this goes on. Am I not anything now? 
Is Gawaine, who would feed you to wild swine, 
And laugh to see them tear you, more than I am? 
Is Arthur, at whose word I was dragged out 
To wear for you the fiery crown itself 
Of human torture, more to you than I am? 
Am I, because you saw death touch me once, 
Too gross a trifle to be longer prized? 
Not many days ago, when you lay hurt 
[91] 



And aching on your bed, and I cried out 
Aloud on heaven that I should bring you there, 
You said you would have paid the price of hell 
To save me that foul morning from the fire. 
You paid enough; yet when you told me that, 
With death going on outside the while you said it, 
I heard the woman in me asking why. 
Nor do I wholly find an answer now 
In any shine of any far-off Light 
You may have seen. Knowing the world, you 

know 
How surely and how indifferently that Light 
Shall bum through many a war that is to be, 
To which this war were no more than a smear 
On circumstance. The world has not begun. 
The Light you saw was not the Light of Rome, 
Or Time, though you seem battling here for time, 
[92] 



While you are still at war with Arthur's host 
And Gawaine's hate. How many thousand men 
Are going to their death before Gawaine 
And Arthur go to theirs — and I to mine?" 

Lancelot, looking off into the fog, 
That held what seemed to be the watery light 
Of a dissolving moon, sighed without hope 
Of saying what the Queen would have him say: 
" I fear, my lady, my fair nephew Bors, 
Whose tongue affords a random wealth of sound, 
May lately have been scattering on the air 
For you a music less oracular 
Than to your liking .... Say, then, you had split 
The uncovered heads of two men with an axe, 
Not knowing whose heads — if that's a palliation — 
And seen their brains fly out and splash the ground 
[93] 



As they were common offal, and then learned 
That you had butchered Gaheris and Gareth — 
Gareth, who had for me a greater love 
Than any that has ever trod the ways 
Of a gross world that early would have crushed him, — 
Even you, in your quick fever of dispatch, 
Might hesitate before you drew the blood 
Of him that was their brother, and my friend. 
Yes, he was more my friend, was I to know, 
Than I had said or guessed; for it was Gawaine 
Who gave to Bors the word that might have saved us, 
And Arthur's fading empire, for the time 
Till Modred had in his dark wormy way 
Crawled into light again with a new ruin 
At work in that occult snake's brain of his. 
And even in your prompt obliteration 
Of Arthur from a changing world that rocks 
[94] 



Itself into a dizziness around him, 
A moment of attendant reminiscence 
Were possible, if not likely. Had he made 
A knight of you, scrolling your name with his 
Among the first of men — and in his love 
Inveterately the first — and had you then 
Betrayed his fame and honor to the dust 
That now is choking him, you might in time — 
You might, I say — to my degree succumb. 
Forgive me, if my lean words are for yours 
Too bare an answer, and ascribe to them 
No tinge of allegation or reproach. 
What I said once to you I said for ever — 
That I would pay the price of hell to save you. 
As for the Light, leave that for me alone; 
Or leave as much of it as yet for me 
May shine. Should I, through any unforeseen 
[95] 



Remote effect of awkwardness or chance, 

Be done to death or durance by the King, 

I leave some writing wherein I beseech 

For you the clemency of afterthought. 

Were I to die and he to see me dead, 

My living prayer, surviving the cold hand 

That wrote, would leave you in his larger prudence, 

If I have known the King, free and secure 

To bide the summoning of another King 

More great than Arthur. But all this is language; 

And I know more than words have yet the scope 

To show of what's to come. Go now to rest; 

And sleep, if there be sleep. There was a moon; 

And now there is no sky where the moon was. 

Sometimes I wonder if this be the world 

We live in, or the world that lives in us." — 

The new day, with a cleansing crash of rain 



That washed and sluiced the soiled and hoof -torn field 
Of Joyous Gard, prepared for Lancelot 
And his wet men the not unwelcome scene 
Of a drenched emptiness without an army. 
"Our friend the foe is given to dry fighting, 
Said Lionel, advancing with a shrug, 
To Lancelot, who saw beyond the rain. 
And later Lionel said, " What fellows are they, 
Who are so thirsty for their morning ride 
That swimming horses would have hardly time 
To eat before they swam? You, Lancelot, 
If I see rather better than a blind man, 
Are waiting on three pilgrims who must love you, 
To voyage a flood like this. No friend have I, 
To whisper not of three, on whom to count 
For such a loyal wash. The King himself 
Would entertain a kindly qualm or so, 
[97] 



Before he suffered such a burst of heaven 
To splash even three musicians." 

" Good Lionel, 
I thank you, but you need afflict your fancy 
No longer for my sake. For these who come, 
If I be not immoderately deceived, 
Are bearing with them the white flower of peace — 
Which I could hope might never parch or wither, 
Were I a stranger to this ravening world 
Where we have mostly a few rags and tags 
Between our skins and those that wrap the flesh 
Of less familiar brutes we feed upon 
That we may feed the more on one another." 

"Well, now that we have had your morning grace 
Before our morning meat, pray tell to me 
[98] 



The why and whence of this anomalous 
Horse-riding offspring of the Fates. Who are they?" 

"I do not read their features or their names; 
But if I read the King, they are from Rome, 
Spurred here by the King's prayer for no delay; 
And I pray God aloud that I say true." 

And after a long watching, neither speaking, 
"You do," said Lionel; "for by my soul, 
I see no other than my lord the Bishop, 
Who does God's holy work in Rochester. 
Since you are here, you may as well abide here, 
While I go foraging." 

Now in the gateway, 
The Bishop, who rode something heavily, 

rooi 



Was glad for rest though grim in his refusal 
At once of entertainment or refection : 
" What else you do, Sir Lancelot, receive me 
As one among the honest when I say- 
That my voluminous thanks were less by cantos 
Than my damp manner feels. Nay, hear my voice: 
If once I'm off this royal animal, 
How o' God's name shall I get on again? 
Moreover, the King waits. With your accord, 
Sir Lancelot, I'll dry my rainy face, 
While you attend what's herein written down, 
In language of portentous brevity, 
For the King's gracious pleasure and for yours, 
Whereof the burden is the word of Rome, 
Requiring your deliverance of the Queen 
Not more than seven days hence. The King returns 
Anon to Camelot; and I go with him, 
[1001 



Praise God, if what he waits now is your will 
To end an endless war. No recrudescence, 
As you may soon remark, of what is past 
Awaits the Queen, or any doubt soever 
Of the King's mercy. Have you more to say 
Than Rome has written, or do I perceive 
Your tranquil acquiescence? Is it so? 
Then be it so! Venite. Pax vobiscum." 

"To end an endless war with 'pax vobiscum' 
Would seem a ready schedule for a bishop; 
Would God that I might see the end of it !" 
Lancelot, like a statue in a gateway, 
Regarded with a qualified rejoicing 
The fading out of his three visitors 
Into the cold and swallowing wall of storm 
Between him and the battle-wearied King 
[101] 



And the unwearying hatred of Gawaine. 

To Bors his nephew, and to Lionel, 

He glossed a tale of Roman intercession, 

Knowing that for a time, and a ljng time, 

The sweetest fare that he might lay before them 

Would hold an evil taste of compromise. 

To Guinevere, who questioned him at noon 

Of what by then had made of Joyous Gard 

A shaken hive of leg' id-heavy wonder, 

He said what most it was the undying Devil, 

Who ruled him when he might, would have him 

say: 
" Your confident arrangement of the board 
For this day's game was notably not to be; 
Today was not for the King's move or mine, 
But for the Bishop's; and the board is empty. 
The words that I have waited for more days 
[1021 



Than are to now my tallage of gray hairs 
Have come at last, and at last you are free. 
So, for a time, there will be no more war; 
And you are going home to Camelot." 

"To Camelot?" . . . 

"To Camelot." But his words 
Were said for no queen's hearing. In his arms 
He caught her when she fell; and in his arms 
He carried her away. The word of Ron 
Was in the rain. There was no other sound. 



[103] 



VII 

All day the rain came down on Joyous Gard, 
Where now there was no joy, and all that night 
The rain came down. Shut in for none to find him. 
Where an unheeded log-fire fought the storm 
With upward swords that flashed along the wall 
Faint hieroglyphs of doom not his to read, 
Lancelot found a refuge where at last 
He might see nothing. Glad for sight of nothing, 
He saw no more. Now and again he buried 
A lonely thought among the coals and ashes 
[104] 



Outside the reaching flame and left it there, 
Quite as he left outside in rainy graves 
The sacrificial hundreds who had filled them. 
"They died, Gawaine," he said, "and you live on, 
You and the King, as if there were no dying; 
And it was I, Gawaine, who let you live — 
You and the King. For what more length of time, 
I wonder, may there still be found on earth 
Foot-room for four of us? We are too many 
For one world, Gawaine; and there may be soon, 
For one or other of us, a way out. 
As men are listed, we are men for men 
To fear; and I fear Modred more than any. 
But even the ghost of Modred at the door — 
The ghost I should have made him — would employ 
For time as hard as this a louder knuckle, 
Assuredly now, than that. And I would see 
[105 1 



No mortal face till morning. . . Well, are you well 
Again? Are you as well again as ever?" 

He led her slowly on with a cold show 
Of care that was less heartening for the Queen 
Than anger would have been, into the firelight, 
And there he gave her cushions. "Are you 

warm?" 
He said; and she said nothing. "Are you afraid?" 
He said again; "are you still afraid of Gawaine? 
As often as you think of him and hate him, 
Remember too that he betrayed his brothers 
To us that he might save us. Well, he saved us 
And Rome, whose name to you was never music, 
Saves you again, with heaven alone may tell 
What others who might have their time to sleep 
In earth out there, with the rain falling on them, 
[106] 



And with no more to fear of wars tonight 

Than you need fear of Gawaine or of Arthur. 

The way before you is a safer way 

For you to follow than when I was in it. 

We children who forget the whips of Time, 

To live within the hour, are slow to see 

That all such hours are passing. They were past 

When you came here with me." 

She looked away, 
Seeming to read the firelight on the walls 
Before she spoke: "When I came here with you, 
And found those eyes of yours, I could have wished 
And prayed it were the end of hours, and years. 
What was it made you save me from the fire, 
If only out of memories and forebodings 
To build around my life another fire 
[1071 



Of slower faggots? If you had let me die, 
Those other faggots would be ashes now, 
And all of me that you have ever loved 
Would be a few more ashes. If I read 
The past as well as you have read the future 
You need say nothing of ingratitude, 
For I say only lies. My soul, of course, 
It was you loved. You told me so yourself. 
And that same precious blue- veined cream-white 

soul 
Will soon be safer, if I understand you, 
In Camelot, where the King is, than elsewhere 
On earth. What more, in faith, have I to ask 
Of earth or heaven than tha.t ! Although I fell 
When you said Camelot, are you to know 
For sure the stroke you gave me then was not 
The measure itself of ecstasy? We women 
[108] 



Are such adept inveterates in our swooning 

That we fall down for joy as easily 

As we eat one another to show our love. 

Even horses, seeing again their absent masters, 

Have wept for joy; great dogs have died of it." 

Having said as much as that, she frowned and held 

Her small white hands out for the fire to warm 

them. 
Forward she leaned, and forward her thoughts went — 
To Camelot. But they were not there long, 
Her thoughts; for soon she flashed her eyes again, 
And he found in them what he wished were tears 
Of angry sorrow for what she had said. 
"What are you going to do with me?" she asked; 
And all her old fricisiveness came back, 
With a new thrust of malice, which he felt 
And feared. "What are you going to do with me? 
[109] 



What does a child do with a worn-out doll? 

I was a child once; and I had a father. 

He was a king; and, having royal ways, 

He made a queen of me — King Arthur's queen. 

And if that happened, once upon a time, 

Why may it not as well be happening now 

That I am not a queen? Was I a queen 

When first you brought me here with one torn rag 

To cover me? Was I overmuch a queen 

When I sat up at last, and in a gear 

That would have made a bishop dance to Cardiff 

To see me wearing it? Was I Queen then?" 

"You were the Queen of Christendom," he said, 
Not smiling at her, "whether now or not 
You deem it an unchristian exercise 
To vilipend the wearing of the vanished. 
[110] 



The women may have reasoned, insecurely, 
That what one queen had worn would please 

another. 
I left them to their ingenuities." 

Once more he frowned away a threatening smile, 
But soon forgot the memory of all smiling 
While he gazed on the glimmering face and hair 
Of Guinevere — the glory of white and gold 
That had been his, and were, for taking of it, 
Still his, to cloud, with an insidious gleam 
Of earth, another that was not of earth, 
And so to make of him a thing of night — 
A moth between a window and a star, 
Not wholly lured by one or led by the other. 
The more he gazed upon her beauty there, 
The longer was he living in two kingdoms, 

r in 1 



Not owning in his heart the king of either, 
And ruling not himself. There was an end 
Of hours, he told her silent face again, 
In silence. On the morning when his fury 
Wrenched her from that foul fire in Camelot, 
Where blood paid irretrievably the toll 
Of her release, the whips of Time had fallen 
Upon them both. All this to Guinevere 
He told in silence and he told in vain. 

Observing her ten fingers variously, 
She sighed, as in equivocal assent, 
"No two queens are alike." 

"Is that the flower 
Of all your veiled invention?" Lancelot said, 
Smiling at last: "If you say, saying all that, 
[112] 



You are not like Isolt — well, you are not 

Isolt was a physician, who cured men 

Their wounds, and sent them ro welling for more; 

Isolt was too dark, and too versatile; 

She was too dark for Mark, if not for Tristram. 

Forgive me; I was saying that to myself, 

And not to make you shiver. No two queens — 

Was that it? — are alike? A longer story 

Might have a longer telling and tell less. 

Your tale's as brief as Pelleas with his vengeance 

On Gawaine, whom he swore that he would slay 

At once for stealing of the lady Ettard." 

"Treasure my scantling wits, if you enjoy them; 
Wonder a little, too, that I conserve them 
Through the eternal memory of one morning, 
And in these years of days that are the death 
[1131 



Of men who die for me. I should have died. 
I should have died for them." 

"You are wrong," he said; 
"They died because Gawaine went mad with hate 
For loss of his two brothers and set the King 
On fire with fear, the two of them believing 
His fear was vengeance when it was in fact 
A royal desperation. They died because 
Your world, my world, and Arthur's world is dying, 
As Merlin said it would. No blame is yours; 
For it was I who led you from the King — 
Or rather, to say truth, it was your glory 
That led my love to lead you from the King — 
By flowery ways, that always end somewhere, 
To fire and fright and exile, and release. 
And if you bid your memory now to blot 

[1141 



Your story from the book of what has been, 
Your phantom happiness were a ghost indeed, 
And I the least of weasels among men, — 
Too false to manhood and your sacrifice 
To merit a niche in hell. If that were so, 
I'd swear there was no light for me to follow, 
Save your eyes to the grave; and to the last 
I might not know that all hours have an end; 
I might be one of those who feed themselves 
By grace of God, on hopes dryer than hay, 
Enjoying not what they eat, yet always eating. 
The Vision shattered, a man's love of living 
Becomes at last a trap and a sad habit, 
More like an ailing dotard's love of liquor 
That ails him, than a man's right love of woman, 
Or of his God. There are men enough like that, 
And I might come to that. Though I see far 
[115] 



Before me now, could I see, looking back, 

A life that you could wish had not been lived, 

I might be such a man. Could I believe 

Our love was nothing mightier then than we were, 

I might be such a man — a living dead man, 

One of these days." 

Guinevere looked at him, 
And all that any woman has not said 
Was in one look: "Why do you stab me now 
With such a needless 'then'? If I am going — 
And I suppose I am — are the words all lost 
That men have said before to dogs and children 
To make them go away? Why use a knife, 
When there are words enough without your 'then* 
To cut as deep as need be? What I ask you 
Is never more to ask me if my life 
[116] 



Be one that I could wish had not been lived — 
And that you never torture it again, 
To make it bleed and ache as you do now. 
Past all indulgence or necessity. 
Were you to give a lonely child who loved you 
One living thing to keep — a bird, may be — 
Before you went away from her forever, 
Would you, for surety not to be forgotten, 
Maim it and leave it bleeding on her fingers? 
And would you leave the child alone with it — 
Alone, and too bewildered even to cry, 
Till you were out of sight? Are you men never 
To know what words are? Do you doubt some- 
times 
A Vision that lets you see so far away 
That you forget so lightly who it was 
You must have cared for once to be so kind — 
[117] 



Or seem so kind — when she, and for that only, 
Had that been all, would throw down crowns and 

glories 
To share with you the last part of the world? 
And even the queen in me would hardly go 
So far off as to vanish: If I were patched 
And scrapped in what the sorriest fisher-wife 
In Orkney might give mumbling to a beggar, 
I doubt if oafs and yokels would annoy me 
More than I willed they should. Am I so old 
And dull, so lean and waning, or what not, 
That you must hurry away to grasp and hoard 
The small effect of time I might have stolen 
From you and from a Light that where it lives 
Must live for ever? Where does history tell you 
The Lord himself would seem in so great haste 
As you for your perfection? If our world — 
[1181 



Your world and mine and Arthur's, as you say, — 
Is going out now to make way for another, 
Why not before it goes, and I go with it, 
Have yet one morsel more of life together, 
Before death sweeps the table and our few crumbs 
Of love are a few last ashes on a fire 
That cannot hurt your Vision, or burn long? 
You cannot warm your lonely fingers at it 
For a great waste of time when I am dead : 
When I am dead you will be on your way, 
With maybe not so much as one remembrance 
Of all I was, to follow you and torment you. 
Some word of Bors may once have given color 
To some few that I said, but they were true — 
Whether Bors told them first to me, or whether 
I told them first to Bors. The Light you saw 
Was not the Light of Rome; the word you had 
[119] 



Of Rome was not the word of God — though Rome 
Has refuge for the weary and heavy-laden. 
Were I to live too long I might seek Rome 
Myself, and be the happier when I found it. 
Meanwhile, am I to be no more to you 
Than a moon-shadow of a lonely stranger 
Somewhere in Camelot? And is there no region 
In this poor fading world of Arthur's now 
Where I may be again what I was once — 
Before I die? Should I live to be old, 
I shall have been long since too far away 
For you to hate me then; and I shall know 
How old I am by seeing it in your eyes." 
Her misery told itself in a sad laugh, 
And in a rueful twisting of her face 
That only beauty's perilous privilege 
Of injury would have yielded or suborned 
[1201 



As hope's infirm accessory while she prayed 

Through Lancelot to heaven for Lancelot. 

She looked away: "If I were God," she said, 

"I should say, 'Let them be as they have been. 

A few more years will heap no vast account 

Against eternity, and all their love 

Was what I gave them. They brought on the 

end 
Of Arthur's empire, which I wrought through 

Merlin 
For the world's knowing of what kings and queens 
Are made for; but they knew not what they did — 
Save as a price, and as a fear that love 
Might end in fear. It need not end that way, 
And they need fear no more for what I gave them; 
For it was I who gave them to each other.' 
If I were God, I should say that to you." 
[121] 



He saw tears quivering in her pleading eyes, 
But through them she could see, with a wild hope, 
That he was fighting. When he spoke, he smiled— 
Much as he might have smiled at her, she thought, 
Had she been Gawaine, Gawaine having given 
To Lancelot, who yet would have him live, 
An obscure wound that would not heal or kill. 

"My life was living backward for the moment," 
He said, still burying in the coals and ashes 
Thoughts that he would not think. His tongue 

was dry, 
And each dry word he said was choking him 
As he said on: "I cannot- ask of you 
That you be kind to me, but there's a kindness 
That is your proper debt. Would you cajole 
Your reason with a weary picturing 
[1221 



On walls or on vain air of what your fancy, 

Like firelight, makes of nothing but itself? 

Do you not see that I go from you only 

Because you go from me? — because our path 

Led where at last it had an end in havoc, 

As long we knew it must — as Arthur too, 

And Merlin knew it must? — as God knew it must? 

A power that I should not have said was mine — 

That was not mine, and is not mine — avails me 

Strangely tonight, although you are here with me; 

And I see much in what has come to pass 

That is to be. The Light that I have seen, 

As you say true, is not the light of Rome, 

Albeit the word of Rome that set you free 

Was more than mine or the King's. To flout that 

word 
Would sound the preparation of a terror 
[ 123 ] 



To which a late small war on our account 
Were a king's pastime and a queen's annoyance; 
And that, for the good fortune of a world 
As yet not over-fortuned, may not be. 
There may be war to come when you are gone, 
For I doubt yet Gawaine; but Rome will hold you, 
Hold you in Camelot. If there be more war, 
No fire of mine shall feed it, nor shall you 
Be with me to endure it. You are free; 
And free, you are going home to Camelot. 
There is no other way than one for you, 
Nor is there more than one for me. We have lived, 
And we shall die. I thank you for my life. 
Forgive me if I say no more tonight." 
He rose, half blind with pity that was no longer 
The servant of his purpose or his will, 
To grope away somewhere among the shadows 
[1241 



For wine to drench his throat and his dry tongue, 
That had been saying he knew not what to her 
For whom his life-devouring love was now 
A. scourge of mercy. 

Like a blue-eyed Medea 
Of white and gold, broken with grief and fear 
And fury that shook her speechless while she waited, 
Yet left her calm enough for Lancelot 
To see her without seeing, she stood up 
To breathe and suffer. Fury could not live long, 
With grief and fear like hers and love like hers, 
When speech came back: "No other way now than 

one? 
Free? Do you call me free? Do you mean by that 
There was never woman alive freer to live 
Than I am free to die? Do you call me free 
[125] 



Because you are driven so near to death yourself 
With weariness of me, and the sight of me, 
That you must use a crueller knife than ever, 
And this time at my heart, for me to watch 
Before you drive it home? For God's sake, drive it! 
Drive it as often as you have the others, 
And let the picture of each wound it makes 
On me be shown to women and men for ever; 
And the good few that know — let them reward you. 
I hear them, in such low and pitying words 
As only those who know, and are not many, 
Are used to say : ' The good knight Lancelot 
It was who drove the knife home to her heart, 
Rather than drive her home to Camelot. , 
Home! Free! Would you let me go there again — 
To be at home? — be free? To be his wife? 
To live in his arms always, and so hate him 
]126] 



That I could heap around him the same faggots 
That you put out with blood? Go home, you say? 
Home? — where I saw the black post waiting for me 
That morning? — saw those good men die for me — 
Gareth and Gaheris, Lamorak's brother Tor, 
And all the rest? Are men to die for me 
For ever? Is there water enough, do you think, 
Between this place and that for me to drown in? " 

"There is time enough, I think, between this hour 
And some wise hour tomorrow, for you to sleep in. 
When you are safe again in Camelot, 
The King will not molest you or pursue you; 
The King will be a suave and chastened man. 
In Camelot you shall have no more to dread 
Than you shall hear then of this rain that roars 
Tonight as if it would be roaring always. 
[127] 



I do not ask that you forgive the faggots, 
Though I would have you do so for your peace. 
Only the wise who know may do so much, 
And they, as you say truly, are not many. 
And I would say no more of this tonight." 

"Then do not ask me for the one last thing 
That I shall give to God! I thought I died 
That morning. Why am I alive again, 
To die again? Are you all done with me? 
Is there no longer something left of me 
That made you need me? Have I lost myself 
So fast that what a mirror says I am 
Is not what is, but only what was once? 
Does half a year do that with us, I wonder, 
Or do I still have something that was mine 
That afternoon when I was in the sunset, 
[128] 



Under the oak, and you were looking at me? 
Your look was not all sorrow for your going 
To find the Light and leave me in the dark — 
But I am the daughter of Leodogran, 
And you are Lancelot, — and have a tongue 
To say what I may not . . . Why must I go 
To Camelot when your kinsmen hold all France? 
Why is there not some nook in some old house 
Where I might hide myself — with you or not? 
Is there no castle, or cabin, or cave in the woods? 
Yes, I could love the bats and owls, in France, 
A lifetime sooner than I could the King 
That I shall see in Camelot, waiting there 
For me to cringe and beg of him again 
The dust of mercy, calling it holy bread. 
I wronged him, but he bought me with a name 
Too large for my king-father to relinquish — 
[129] 



Though I prayed him, and I prayed God aloud, 
To spare that crown. I called it crown enough 
To be my father's child — until you came. 
And then there were no crowns or kings or fathers 
Under the sky. I saw nothing but you. 
And you would whip me back to bury myself 
In Camelot, with a few slave maids and lackeys 
To be my grovelling court; and even their faces 
Would not hide half the story. Take me to 

France — 
To France or Egypt, — anywhere else on earth 
Than Camelot! Is there not room in France 
For two more dots of mortals? — or for one? — 
For me alone? Let Lionet go with me — 
Or Bors. Let Bors go with me into France, 
And leave me there. And when you think of me, 
Say Guinevere is in France, where she is happy; 
[1301 



And you may say no more of her than that . . . 
Why do you not say something to me now — 
Before I go? Why do you look — and look? 
Why do you frown as if you thought me mad? 
I am not mad — but I shall soon be mad, 
If I go back to Camelot where the King is. 
Lancelot! ... Is there nothing left of me? 
Nothing of what you called your white and gold, 
And made so much of? Has it all gone by? 
He must have been a lonely God who made 
Man in his image and then made only a woman! 
Poor fool she was ! Poor Queen ! Poor Guinevere ! 
There were kings and bishops once, under her window 
Like children, and all scrambling for a flower. 
Time was! — God help me, what am I saying now! 
Does a Queen's memory wither away to that? 
Am I so dry as that? Am I a shell? 
[131] 



Have I become so cheap as this? ... I wonder 
Why the King cared!" She fell down on her knees 
Crying, and held his knees with hungry fear. 

Over his folded arms, as over the ledge 
Of a storm-shaken parapet, he could see, 
Below him, like a tumbling flood of gold, 
The Queen's hair with a crumpled foam of white 
Around it: "Do you ask, as a child would, 
For France because it has a name? How long 
Do you conceive the Queen of the Christian world 
Would hide herself in France were she to go there? 
How long should Rome require to find her there? 
And how long, Rome orliot, would such a flower 
As you survive the unrooting and transplanting 
That you commend so ingenuously tonight? 
And if we shared your cave together, how long, 
[1321 



And in the joy of what obscure seclusion, 
If I may say it, were Lancelot of the Lake 
And Guinevere an unknown man and woman, 
For no eye to see twice? There are ways to 

France, 
But why pursue them for Rome's interdict, 
And for a longer war? Your path is now 
As open as mine is dark — or would be dark, 
Without the Light that once had blinded me 
To death, had I seen more. I shall see more, 
And I shall not be blind. I pray, moreover, 
That you be not so now. You are a Queen, 
And you may be no other. You are too brave 
And kind and fair for men to cheer with lies. 
We cannot make one world of two, nor may we 
Count one life more than one. Could we go back 
To the old garden, we should not stay long; 
[133] 



The fruit that we should find would all be fallen, 
And have the taste of earth." 

When she looked up, 
A tear fell on her forehead. "Take me away!" 
She cried. "Why do you do this? Why do you 

say this? 
If you are sorry for me, take me away 
From Camelot! Send me away — drive me away — 
Only away from there! The King is there — 
And I may kill him if I see him there. 
Take me away — take me away to France! 
And if I cannot hide myself in France, 
Then let me die in France!" 

He shook his head, 
Slowly, and raised her slowly in his arms, 
[ 1341 



Holding her there; and they stood long together. 
And there was no sound then of anything, 
Save a low moaning of a broken woman, 
And the cold roaring down of that long rain. 

All night the rain came down on Joyous Gard; 
And all night, there before the crumbling embers 
That faded into feathery death-like dust, 
Lancelot sat and heard it. He saw not 
The fire that died, but he heard rain that fell 
On all those graves around him and those years 
Behind him; and when dawn came, he was cold. 
At last he rose, and for a time stood seeing 
The place where she had been. She was not there; 
He was not sure that she had ever been there; 
He was not sure there was a Queen, or a King, 
Or a world with kingdoms on it. He was cold. 
[1351 



He was not sure of anything but the Light — 

The Light he saw not. "And I shall not see it," 

He thought, "so long as I kill men for Gawaine. 

If I kill him, I may as well kill myself; 

And I have killed his brothers." He tried to sleep, 

But rain had washed the sleep out of his life, 

And there was no more sleep. When he awoke, 

He did not know that he had been asleep; 

And the same rain was falling. At some strange hour 

It ceased, and there was light. And seven days after. 

With a cavalcade of silent men and women, 

The Queen rode into Camelot, where the King was, 

And Lancelot rode grimly at her side. 

When he rode home again to Joyous Gard, 
The storm in Gawaine's eyes and the King's word 
Of banishment attended him. " Gawaine 
[136] 



Will give the King no peace," Lionel said; 
And Lancelot said after him, "Therefore 
The King will have no peace." — And so it was 
That Lancelot, with many of Arthur's knights 
That were not Arthur's now, sailed out one day 
From Cardiff to Bayonne, where soon Gawaine, 
The King, and the King's army followed them, 
For longer sorrow and for longer war. 



137] 



VIII 

For longer war they came, and with a fury 
That only Modred's opportunity, 
Seized in the dark of Britain, could have hushed 
And ended in a night. For Lancelot, 
When he was hurried amazed out of his rest 
Of a gray morning to the scarred gray wall 
Of Benwick, where he slept and fought, and saw 
Not yet the termination of a strife 
That irked him out of utterance, found again 
Before him a still plain without an army. 
[138] 



What the mist hid between him and the dis- 
tance 
He knew not, but a multitude of doubts 
And hopes awoke in him, and one black fear, 
At sight of a truce-waving messenger 
In whose approach he read, as by the Light 
Itself, the last of Arthur. The man reined 
His horse outside the gate, and Lancelot, 
Above him on the wall, with a sick heart, 
Listened: "Sir Gawaine to Sir Lancelot 
Sends greeting; and this with it, in his hand. 
The King has raised the siege, and you in France 
He counts no longer with his enemies. 
His toil is now for Britain, and this war 
With you, Sir Lancelot, is an old war, 
If you will have it so." — "Bring the man in," 
Said Lancelot, "and see that he fares well." 
[139] 



All through the sunrise, and alone, he sat 
With Gawaine's letter, looking toward the sea 
That flowed somewhere between him and the land 
That waited Arthur's coming, but not his. 
"King Arthur's war with me is an old war, 
If I will have it so," he pondered slowly; 
"And Gawaine's hate for me is an old hate, 
If I will have it so. But Gawaine's wound 
Is not a wound that heals; and there is Modred — 
Inevitable as ruin after flood. 

The cloud that has been darkening Arthur's empire 
May now have burst, with Arthur still in France, 
Many hours away from Britain, and a world 
Away from me. But I read this in my heart. 
If in the blot of Modred's evil shadow, 
Conjecture views a cloudier world than is, 
So much the better, then, for clouds and worlds, 
[140] 



And kings. Gawaine says nothing yet of this, 
But when he tells me nothing he tells all. 
Now he is here, fordone and left behind, 
Pursuant of his wish; and there are words 
That he would say to rne. Had I not struck him 
Twice to the earth, unwillingly, for my life, 
My best eye then, I fear, were best at work 
On what he has not written. As it is, 
If I go seek him now, and in good faith, 
My faith may dig my grave. If so, then so. 
If I know only with my eyes and ears, 
I may as well not know." 

Gawaine, having scanned 
His words and sent them, found a way to sleep — 
And sleeping, to forget. But he remembered 
Quickly enough when he woke up to meet 
[1411 



With his the shining gaze of Lancelot 
Above him in a shuttered morning gloom, 
Seeming at first a darkness that had eyes. 
Fear for a moment seized him, and his heart, 
Long whipped and driven with fever, paused and 

flickered, 
As like to fail too soon. Fearing to move, 
He waited; fearing to speak, he waited; fearing 
To see too clearly or too much, he waited; 
For what, he wondered — even the while he knew 
It was for Lancelot to say something. 
And soon he did : " Gawaine, I thought at first 
No man was here." 

"No man was, till you came. 
Sit down; and for the love of God who made you, 
Say nothing to me now of my three brothers. 

[1421 



Gareth and Gaheris and Agravaine 
Are gone; and I am going after them; 
Of such is our election. When you gave 
That ultimate knock on my revengeful head, 
You did a piece of work." 

"May God forgive," 
Lancelot said, " I did it for my life, 
Not yours." 

"I know, but I was after yours; 
Had I been Lancelot, and you Gawaine, 
You might be dead." 

" Had you been Lancelot, 
And I Gawaine, my life had not been yours — 
Not willingly. Your brothers are my debt 
[1431 



That I shall owe to sorrow and to God, 
For whatsoever payment there may be. 
What I have paid is not a little, Gawaine." 

"Why leave me out? A brother more or less 
Would hardly be the difference of a shaving. 
My loose head would assure you, saying this, 
That I have no more venom in me now 
On their account than mine, which is not much. 
There was a madness feeding on us all, 
As we fed on the world. When the world sees, 
The world will have in turn another madness; 
And so, as I've a glimpse, ad infinitum. 
But I'm not of the seers:. Merlin it was 
Who turned a sort of ominous early glimmer 
On my profane young life. And after that 
He falls himself, so far that he becomes 
[144] 



One of our most potential benefits — 
Like Vivian, or the mortal end of Modred. 
Why could you not have taken Modred also, 
And had the five of us? You did your best, 
We know, yet he's more poisonously alive 
Than ever; and he's a brother, of a sort, 
Or half of one, and you should not have missed him. 
A gloomy curiosity was our Modred, 
From his first intimation of existence. 
God made him as He made the crocodile, 
To prove He was omnipotent. Having done so, 
And seeing then that Camelot, of all places 
Ripe for annihilation, most required him, 
He put him there at once, and there he grew. 
And there the King would sit with him for hours, 
Admiring Modred's growth; and all the time 
His evil it was that grew, the King not seeing 
[145] 






In Modred the Almighty's instrument 
Of a world's overthrow. You, Lancelot, 
And I, have rendered each a contribution; 
And your last hard attention on my skull 
Might once have been a benison on the realm, 
As I shall be, too late, when I'm laid out 
With a clean shroud on — though I'd liefer stay 
A while alive with you to see what's coming. 
But I was not for that; I may have been 
For something, but not that. The King, my uncle, 
Has had for all his life so brave a diet 
Of miracles, that his new fare before him 
Of late has ailed him strangely; and of all 
Who loved him once he needs you now the most— 
Though he would not so much as whisper this 
To me or to my shadow. He goes alone 
To Britain, with an army brisk as lead, 
[ 146] 



To battle with his Modred for a throne 
That waits, I fear, for Modred — should your France 
Not have it otherwise. And the Queen's in this, 
For Modred's game and prey. God save the 

Queen, 
If not the King! I've always liked this world; 
And I would a deal rather live in it 
Than leave it in the middle of all this music. 
If you are listening, give me some cold water." 

Lancelot, seeing by now in dim detail 
What little was around him to be seen, 
Found what he sought and held a cooling cup 
To Gawaine, who, with both hands clutching it, 
Drank like a child. "I should have had that first," 
He said, with a loud breath, "before my tongue 
Began to talk. What was it saying? Modred? 
[147] 



All through the growing pains of his ambition 
I've watched him; and I might have this and that 
To say about him, if my hours were days. 
Well, if you love the King and hope to save him, 
Remember his many infirmities of virtue — 
Considering always what you have in Modred, 
For ever unique in his iniquity. 
My truth might have a prejudicial savor 
To strangers, but we are not strangers now. 
Though I have only one spoiled eye that sees, 
I see in yours we are not strangers now. 
I tell you, as I told you long ago — 
When the Queen came to put my candles out 
With her gold head and Tier propinquity — 
That all your doubts that you had then of me, 
When they were more than various imps and 
harpies 

[1481 



Of your inflamed invention, were sick doubts: 
King Arthur was my uncle, as he is now; 
But my Queen-aunt, who loved him something less 
Than cats love rain, was not my only care. 
Had all the women who came to Camelot 
Been aunts of mine, I should have been, long since, 
The chilliest of all unwashed eremites 
In a far land alone. For my dead brothers, 
Though I would leave them where I go to them, 
I read their story as I read my own, 
And yours, and — were I given the eyes of God — 
As I might yet read Modred's. For the Queen, 
May she be safe in London where she's hiding 
Now in the Tower. For the King, you only — 
And you but hardly — may deliver him yet 
From that which Merlin's vision long ago, 
If I made anything of Merlin's words, 
[149] 



Foretold of Arthur's end. And for ourselves, 
And all who died for us, or now are dying 
Like rats around us of their numerous wounds 
And ills and evils, only this do I know — 
And this you know: The world has paid enough 
For Camelot. It is the world's turn now — 
Or so it would be if the world were not 
The world. 'Another Camelot,' Bedivere says; 
4 Another Camelot arid another King' — 
Whatever he means by that. With a lineal twist, 
I might be king myself; and then, my lord, 
Time would have sung my reign — I say not how. 
Had I gone on with you, and seen with you 
Your Gleam, and had some ray of it been mine, 
I might be seeing more and saying less. 
Meanwhile, I liked this world; and what was on 
The Lord's mind when He made it is no matter 
[150] 



Be lenient, Lancelot; I've a light head. 
Merlin appraised it once when I was young, 
Telling me then that I should have the world 
To play with. Well, I've had it, and played with 

it; 
And here I'm with you now where you have sent 

me 
Neatly to bed, with a towel over one eye; 
And we were two of the world's ornaments. 
Praise all you are that Arthur was your King; 
You might have had no Gleam had I been King, 
Or had the Queen been like some queens I knew. 
King Lot, my father — " 

Lancelot laid a finger 
On Gawaine's lips: "You are too tired for that." — 
"Not yet," said Gawaine, "though I may be soon. 
[151] 



Think you that I forget this Modred's mother 
Was mine as well as Modred's? When I meet 
My mother's ghost, what shall I do — forgive? 
When I'm a ghost, I'll forgive everything . . . 
It makes me cold to think what a ghost knows. 
Put out the bonfire burning in my head, 
And light one at my feet. When the King thought 
The Queen was in the flames, he called on you : 
'God, God,' he said, and 'Lancelot.' I was there, 
And so I heard him. That was a bad morning 
For kings and queens, and there are to be worse. 
Bedivere had a dream, once on a time: 
'Another Camelot and another King,' 
He says when he's awake; but when he dreams, 
There are no kings. Tell Bedivere, some day, 
That he saw best awake. Say to the King 
That I saw nothing vaster than my shadow, 
[152] 



Until it was too late for me to see; 

Say that I loved him well, but served him ill — 

If you two meet again. Say to the Queen . . . 

Say what you may say best. Remember me 

To Pelleas, too, and tell him that his lady 

Was a vain serpent. He was dying once 

For love of her, and had me in his eye 

For company along the dusky road 

Before me now. But Pelleas lived, and married. 

Lord God, how much we know! — What have I done? 

Why do you scowl? Well, well, — so the earth 

clings 
To sons of earth; and it will soon be clinging, 
To this one son of earth you deprecate, 
Closer than heretofore. I say too much, 
Who should be thinking all a man may think 
When he has no machine. I say too much — 

r 153 1 



Always. If I persuade the devil again 
That I'm asleep, will you espouse the notion 
For a small hour or so? I might be glad — 
Not to be here alone." He gave his hand 
Slowly, in hesitation. Lancelot shivered, 
Knowing the chill of it. "Yes, you say too much," 
He told him, trying to smile. "Now go to sleep; 
And if you may, forget what you forgive." 

Lancelot, for slow hours that were as long 
As leagues were to the King and his worn army, 
Sat waiting, — though not long enough to know 
From any word of Gawaine, who slept on, 
That he was glad not to be there alone. — 
"Peace to your soul, Gawaine," Lancelot said, 
And would have closed his eyes. But they were 
closed. 

1 154 ] 



IX 

So Lancelot, with a world's weight upon him, 
Went heavily to that heaviest of all toil, 
Which of itself tells hard in the beginning 
Of what the end shall be. He found an army 
That would have razed all Britain, and found kings 
For generals; and they all went to Dover, 
Where the white cliffs were ghostlike in the dawn, 
And after dawn were deathlike. For the word 
Of the dead King's last battle chilled the sea 
Before a sail was down; and all who came 
[155] 



With Lancelot heard soon from little men, 
Who clambered overside with larger news, 
How ill had fared the great. Arthur was dead, 
And Modred with him, each by the other slain; 
And there was no knight left of all who fought 
On Salisbury field save one, Sir Bedivere, 
Of whom the tale was told that he had gone 
Darkly away to some far hermitage, 
To think and die. There were tales told of a 
ship. 

Anon, by further sounding of more men, 
Each with a more delirious involution 
Than his before him, he believed at last 
The Queen was yet alive — if it were life 
To draw now the Queen's breath, or to see 
Britain 

[1561 



With the Queen's eyes — and that she fared some- 
where 
To westward out of London, where the Tower 
Had held her, as once Joyous Gard had held her, 
For dolorous weeks and months a prisoner there, 
With Modred not far off, his eyes afire 
For her and for the King's avenging throne, 
That neither King nor son should see again. 
" * The world has paid enough for Camelot,' 
Gawaine said; and the Queen has paid enough, 
God knows," said Lancelot. He saw Bors again 
And found him angry — angry with his tears, 
And with his fate that was a reason for them : 
" Could I have died with Modred on my soul, 
And had the King lived on, then had I lived 
On with him; and this played-out world of ours 
Might not be for the dead." 
[157] 



"A played-out world, 

Although that world be ours, had best be dead," 

Said Lancelot: "There arc worlds enough to 
v 
follow. 

* Another Camelot and another King,* 

Bedivere said. And where is Bedivere now? 

And Camelot?" 

"There is no Camelot," 
Bors answered. "Are we going back to France, 
Or are we to tent here and feed our souls 
On memories and on ruins till even our souls 
Are dead? Or are we to set free for sport 
An idle army for what comes of it?" 

" Be idle till you hear from me again, 

Or for a fortnight. Then, if you have no word, 

f 1581 



Go back; and I may follow you alone, 
In my own time, in my own way." 

" Your way 
Of late, I fear, has been too much your own; 
But what has been, has been, and I say nothing. 
For there is more than men at work in this; 
And I have not your eyes to find the Light, 
Here in the dark — though some day I may see it." 

"We shall all see it, Bors," Lancelot said, 
With his eyes on the earth. He said no more. 
Then with a sad farewell, he rode away, 
Somewhere into the west. He knew not where. 

"We shall all see it, Bors," he said again. 
Over and over he said it, still as he rode, 
[ 159 1 



And rode, away to the west, he knew not where, 
Until at last he smiled unhappily 
At the vain sound of it. "Once I had gone 
Where the Light guided me, but the Queen came, 
And then there was no Light. We shall all see — " 
He bit the words off short, snapping his teeth, 
And rode on with his memories before him, 
Before him and behind. They were a cloud 
For no Light now to pierce. They were a cloud 
Made out of what was gone; and what was gone 
Had now another lure than once it had, 
Before it went so far away from him — 
To Camelot. And there was no Camelot now — 
Now that no Queen was there, all white and gold, 
Under an oaktree with another sunlight 
Sifting itself in silence on her glory 
Through the dark leaves above her where she sat, 
[1601 



Smiling at what she feared, and fearing least 

What most there was to fear. Ages ago 

That must have been; for a king's world had 

faded 
Since then, and a king with it. Ages ago, 
And yesterday, surely it must have been 
That he had held her moaning in the firelight 
And heard the roaring down of that long rain, 
As if to wash away the walls that held them 
Then for that hour together. Ages ago, 
And always, it had been that he had seen her, 
As now she was, floating along before him, 
Too far to touch and too fair not to follow, 
Even though to touch her were to die. He closed 
His eyes, only to see what he had seen 
When they were open; and he found it nearer, 
Seeing nothing now but the still white and gold 
[161] 



In a wide field of sable, smiling at him, 
But with a smile not hers until today — 
A smile to drive no votary from the world 
To find the Light. "She is not what it is 
That I see now," he said: "No woman alive 
And out of hell was ever like that to me. 
What have I done to her since I have lost her? 
What have I done to change her? No, it is I — 
I who have changed. She is not one who changes. 
The Light came, and I did not follow it; 
Then she came, knowing not what thing she did, 
And she it was I followed. The gods play 
Like that, sometimes; and when the gods are playing, 
Great men are not so great as the great gods 
Had led them once to dream. I see her now 
Where now she is alone. We are all alone, 
We that are left; and if I look too long 
[162] 



Into her eyes ... I shall not look too long. 
Yet look I must. Into the west, they say, 
She went for refuge. I see nuns around her; 
But she, with so much history tenanting 
Her eyes, and all that gold over her eyes, 
Were not yet, I should augur, one of them. 
If I do ill to see her, then may God 
Forgive me one more trespass. I would leave 
The world and not the shadow of it behind me." 

Time brought his weary search to a dusty end 
One afternoon in Almesbury, where he left, 
With a glad sigh, his horse in an inn yard; 
And while he ate his food and drank his wine, 
Thrushes, indifferent in their loyalty 
To Arthur dead and to Pan never dead, 
Sang as if all were now as all had been. 
[1631 



Lancelot heard them till his thoughts came back 
To freeze his heart again under the flood 
Of all his icy fears. What should he find? 
And what if he should not find anything? 
"Words, after all," he said, "are only words; 
And I have heard so many in these few days 
That half my wits are sick." 

He found the Queen, 
But she was not the Queen of white and gold 
That he had seen before him for so long. 
There was no gold; there was no gold anywhere. 
The black hood, and the white face under it, 
And the blue frightened eyes, were all he saw — 
Until he saw more black, and then more white. 
Black was a foreign foe to Guinevere; 
And in the glimmering stillness where he found her 
[1641 



Now, it was death; and she Alcestis-like, 

Had waited unaware for the one hand 

Availing, so he thought, that would have torn 

Off and away the last fell shred of doom 

That was destroying and dishonoring 

All the world held of beauty. His eyes burned 

With a sad anger as he gazed at hers 

That shone with a sad pity. "No," she said; 

" You have not come for this. We are done with this. 

For there are no queens here; there is a Mother. 

The Queen that was is only a child now, 

And you are strong. Remember you are strong, 

And that your fingers hurt when they forget 

How strong they are." 

He let her go from him 
And while he gazed around him, he frowned hard 
[165] 



And long at the cold walls: "Is this the end 
Of Arthur's kingdom and of Camelot?" — 
She told him with a motion of her shoulders 
All that she knew of Camelot or of kingdoms; 
And then said: "We are told of other States 
Where there are palaces, if we should need them, 
That are not made with hands. I thought you knew." 

Dumb, like a man twice banished, Lancelot 
Stood gazing down upon the cold stone floor; 
And she, demurely, with a calm regard 
That he met once and parried, stood apart, 
Appraising him with eyes that were no longer 
Those he had seen when first they had seen his. 
They were kind eyes, but they were not the eyes 
Of his desire; and they were not the eyes 
That he had followed all the way from Dover. 
[166] 



"I feared the Light was leading you," she said, 

"So far by now from any place like this 

That I should have your memory, but no more. 

Might not that way have been the wiser way? 

There is no Arthur now, no Modred now, — 

No Guinevere." She paused, and her voice 

wandered 
Away from her own name: "There is nothing now 
That I can see between you and the Light 
That I have dimmed so long. If you forgive me, 
And I believe you do — though I know all 
That I have cost, when I was worth so little — 
There is no hazard that I see between you 
And what you sought so long, and would have found 
Had I not always hindered you. Forgive me — 
I could not let you go. God pity men 
When women love too much — and women more." 
[167] 



He scowled and with an iron shrug he said : 
"Yes, there is that between me and the light." 
He glared at her black hood as if to seize it; 
Their eyes met, and she smiled: "No, Lancelot; 
We are going by two roads to the same end; 
Or let us hope, at least, what knowledge hides, 
And so believe it. We are going somewhere. 
Why the new world is not for you and me, 
I cannot say; but only one was ours. 
I think we must have lived in our one world 
All that earth had for us. You are good to me, 
Coming to find me here for the last time; 
For I should have been lonely many a night, 
Not knowing if you cared. I do know now; 
And there is not much else for me to know 
That earth may tell me. I found in the Tower, 
With Modred watching me, that all you said 
f 168 1 



That rainy night was true. There was time there 
To find out everything. There were long days, 
And there were nights that I should not have 

said 
God would have made a woman to endure. 
I wonder if a woman lives who knows 
All she may do." 

"I wonder if one woman 
Knows one thing she may do," Lancelot said, 
With a sad passion shining out of him 
While he gazed on her beauty, palled with black 
That hurt him like a sword. The full blue eyes 
And the white face were there, and the red lips 
Were there, but there was no gold anywhere. 
"What have you done with your gold hair?" he 
said; 

[1691 



"I saw it shining all the way from Dover, 
But here I do not see it. Shall I see it?" — 
Faintly again she smiled: "Yes, you may see it 
All the way back to Dover; but not here. 
There's not much of it here, and what there is 
Is not for you to see." 

"Well, if not here," 
He said at last, in a low voice that shook, 
"Is there no other place left in the world?" 

"There is not even the world left, Lancelot, 
For you and me." 

"There is France left," he said. 
His face flushed like a boy's, but he stood firm 
As a peak in the sea and waited. 
[170] 



"How many lives 
Must a man have in one to make him happy?" 
She asked, with a wan smile of recollection 
That only made the black that was around 
Her calm face more funereal : " Was it you, 
Or was it Gawaine who said once to me, 
* We cannot make one world of two, nor may we 
Count one life more than one. Could we go back 
To the old garden ' . . . Was it you who said it, 
Or was it Bors? He was always saying something. 
It may have been Bors." She was not looking then 
At Lancelot; she was looking at her fingers 
In her old way, as to be sure again 
How many of them she had. 

He looked at her, 
Without the power to smile, and for the time 

[1711 



Forgot that he was Lancelot: "Is it fair 
For you to drag that back, out of its grave, 
And hold it up like this for the small feast 
Of a small pride? " 

"Yes, fair enough for a woman," 
Guinevere said, not seeing his eyes. "How long 
Do you conceive the Queen of the Christian world 
Would hide herself in France ..." 

"Why do you pause? 
I said it; I remember when I said it; 
And it was not today. Why in the name 
Of grief should we hide anywhere ? Bells and banners 
Are not for our occasion, but in France 
There may be sights and silences more fair 
Than pageants. There are seas of difference 
[1721 



Between this land and France, albeit to cross them 
Were no immortal voyage, had you an eye 
For France that you had once." 

"I have no eye 
Today for France, I shall have none tomorrow; 
And you will have no eye for France tomorrow. 
Fatigue and loneliness, and your poor dream 
Of what I was, have led you to forget. 
When you have had your time to think and see 
A little more, then you will see as I do; 
And if you see France, I shall not be there, 
Save as a memory there. We are done, you and I, 
With what we were. ' Could we go back again, 
The fruit that we should find ' — but you know best 
What we should find. I am sorry for what I said; 
But a light word, though it cut one we love, 
[173] 



May save ourselves the pain of a worse wound. 
We are all women. When you see one woman — 
When you see me — before you in your fancy, 
See me all white and gold, as I was once. 
I shall not harm you then; I shall not come 
Between you and the Gleam that you must follow, 
Whether you will or not. There is no place 
For me but where I am; there is no place 
For you save where it' is that you are going. 
If I knew everything as I know that, 
I should know more than Merlin, who knew all, 
And long ago, that we are to know now. 
What more he knew he may not then have told 
The King, or anyone, — maybe not even himself; 
Though Vivian may know something by this time 
That he has told her. Have you wished, I wonder, 
That I was more like Vivian, or Isolt? 
[174] 



The dark ones are more devious and more famous, 
And men fall down more numerously before 

them — 
Although I think more men get up again, 
And go away again, than away from us. 
If I were dark, I might say otherwise. 
Try to be glad, even if you are sorry, 
That I was not born dark; for I was not. 
For me there was no dark until it came 
When the King came, and with his heavy shadow 
Put out the sun that you made shine again 
Before I was to die. So I forgive 
The faggots; I can do no more than that — 
For you, or God." She looked away from him 
And in the casement saw the sunshine dying: 
. "The time that we have left will soon be gone; 
When the bell rings, it rings for you to go, 
[175] 



But not for me to go. It rings for me 

To stay — and pray. I, who have not prayed much, 

May as well pray now. I have not what you have 

To make me see, though I shall have, sometime, 

A new light of my own. I saw in the Tower, 

When all was darkest and I may have dreamed, 

A light that gave to men the eyes of Time 

To read themselves in silence. Then it faded, 

And the men faded. I was there alone. 

I shall not have what you have, or much else — 

In this place. I shall see in other places 

What is not here. I shall not be alone. 

And I shall tell myself that you are seeing 

All that I cannot see. For the time now, 

What most I see is that I had no choice, 

And that you came to me. How many years 

Of purgatory shall I pay God for saying 

r 176 1 



This to you here? " Her words came slowly out, 
And her mouth shook. 

He took her two small hands 
That were so pale and empty, and so cold: 
"Poor child, I said too much and heard too little 
Of what I said. But when I found you here, 
So different, so alone, I would have given 
My soul to be a chattel and a gage 
For dicing fiends to play for, could so doing 
Have brought one summer back." 

" When they are gone," 
She said, with grateful sadness in her eyes, 
" We do not bring them back, or buy them back, 
Even with our souls. I see now it is best 
We do not buy them back, even with our souls." 
[1771 



A slow and hollow bell began to sound 
Somewhere above them, and the world became 
For Lancelot one wan face — Guinevere's face. 
" When the bell rings, it rings for you to go," 
She said; "and you are going ... I am not. 
Think of me always as I used to be, 
All white and gold — for that was what you called 

me. 
You may see gold again when you are gone; 
And I shall not be there." — He drew her nearer 
To kiss the quivering lips that were before him 
For the last time. "No, not again," she said; 
"I might forget that I am not alone . . . 
I shall not see you in this world again, 
But I am not alone. No, . . . not alone. 
We have had all there was, and you were kind — 
Even when you tried so hard once to be cruel. 
[1781 



I knew it then .... or now I do. Good-bye." 
He crushed her cold white hands and saw them 

falling 
Away from him like flowers into a grave. 

When she looked up to see him, he was gone; 

And that was all she saw till she awoke 

In her white cell, where the nuns carried her 

With many tears and many whisperings. 

" She was the Queen, and he was Lancelot," 

One said. " They were great lovers. It is not 

good 
To know too much of love. We who love God 
Alone are happiest. Is it not so, Mother?" — 
"We who love God alone, my child, are safest," 
The Mother replied; "and we are not all safe 
Until we are all dead. We watch, and pray." 

r i79i 



Outside again, Lancelot heard the sound 
Of reapers he had seen. With lighter tread 
He walked away to them to see them nearer; 
He walked and heard again the sound of thrushes 
Far off. He saw below him, stilled with yellow, 
A world that was not Arthur's, and he saw 
The convent roof; and then he could see nothing 
But a wan face and two dim lonely hands 
That he had left behind. They were down there, 
Somewhere, her poor white face and hands, alone. 
"No man was ever alone like that," he thought, 
Not knowing what last havoc pity and love 
Had still to wreak on wisdom. Gradually, 
In one long wave it whelmed him, and then 

broke — 
Leaving him like a lone man on a reef, 
Staring for what had been with him, but now 
[180] 






Wag gone and was a white face under the sea, 
Alive there, and alone — always alone. 
He closed his eyes, and the white face was there, 
But not the gold. The gold would not come back. 
There were gold fields of corn that lay around him, 
But they were not the gold of Guinevere — 
Though men had once, for sake of saying words, 
Prattled of corn about it. The still face 
Was there, and the blue eyes that looked at him 
Through all the stillness of all distances; 
And he could see her lips, trying to say 
Again, "I am not alone." And that was all 
His life had said to him that he remembered 
While he sat there with his hands over his eyes, 
And his heart aching. When he rose again 
The reapers had gone home. Over the land 
Around him in the twilight there was rest. 
[1811 



There was rest everywhere; and there was none 
That found his heart. "Why should I look for 

peace 
When I have made the world a ruin of war?" 
He muttered; and a Voice within him said: 
"Where the Light falls, death falls; a world has 

died 
For you, that a world may live. There is no peace. 
Be glad no man or woman bears for ever 
The burden of first days. There is no peace." 

A word stronger than his willed him away 
From Almesbury. All alone he rode that night, • 
Under the stars, led by the living Voice 
That would not give him peace. Into the dark 
He rode, but not for Dover. Under the stars, 
Alone, all night he rode, out of a world 
[1821 



That was not his, or the King's; and in the night 

He felt a burden lifted as he rode, 

While he prayed he might bear it for the sake 

Of a still face before him that was fading, 

Away in a white loneliness. He made, 

Once, with groping hand as if to touch it, 

But a black branch of leaves was all he found. 

Now the still face was dimmer than before, 
And it was not so near him. He gazed hard, 
But through his tears he could not see it now; 
And when the tears were gone he could see only 
.That all he saw was fading, always fading; 
And she was there alone. She was the world 
That he was losing; and the world he sought 
Was all a tale for those who had been living, 
And had not lived. Once even he turned his horse, 
[183] 






And would have brought his army back with him 
To make her free. They should be free together. 
But the Voice within him said: "You are not free. 
You have come to the world's end, and it is best 
You are not free. Where the Light falls, death falls; 
And in the darkness comes the Light/' He turned 
Again; and he rode on, under the stars, 
Out of the world, into he knew not what, 
Until a vision chilled him and he saw, 
Now as in Camelot, long ago in the garden, 
The face of Galahad who had seen and died, 
And was alive, now in a mist of gold. 
He rode on into the dark, under the stars, 
And there were no more faces. There was nothing. 
But always in the darkness he rode on, 
Alone; and in the darkness came the Light. 

T184] 



